Marissa Gencarelli Transcript

 Marissa Gencarelli Transcript

 Jessie Sheehan:
Hi peeps, you are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and cookbook author and my fourth book is coming out this fall. Each Saturday I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes. 

My guest today is Marissa Gencarelli, the Kansas City based co-founder of Yoli Tortilleria. Marissa's award-winning tortillas are a delicious tribute to her childhood and the traditional methods behind this Mexican staple. In this episode, Marissa and I dive into each step of the tortilla making process from sourcing the corn to waiting for that perfect puff moment and how you can do all of it at home. Marissa's commitment to continuing the tradition and art of tortilla making is so inspiring. Stay tuned for our chat. 

Thank you to Plugra Premium European-Style Butter for supporting today's show. As some of you know, I've been a big fan of Plugra for some time now and was introduced to it at my very first bakery job when I was just a newbie baker. Fast forward to today, I'm a professional baker, cookbook author and recipe developer and I continue to rely on Plugra for all my baking needs. My fridge is always stocked with Plugra sticks and solids. I especially love that Plugra contains 82% butter fat. The higher butter fat content means less moisture and more fat and as bakers know fat equals flavor. Plugra butter is also slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. I do a lot of baking this time of year for work and for myself and my family. Comfy bakes like my pistachio chocolate anytime buns and cinnamon sugar buttermilk donut holes, and I always reach for Plugra unsalted butter. I've also been making a lot of yeasted breads lately and I love the buttery flavor Plugra adds to my dough. Plugra Premium European-Style Butter is the perfect choice from professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugra at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes. 

Guess what? The next issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine is all about Paris. Whether you're headed to Paris this year, dreaming of Paris, or just a Francophile at heart, you're going to love this issue. Get recommendations from She's My Cherry Pie faves like Dorie Greenspan and Zoe Bakes. Meet the coolest Parisians around and learn about their restaurants, shops, bars and bakeries. And meet some fascinating expats who change their lives when they move to the city of light. You can subscribe now at cherrybombe.com or pick up an issue at your favorite local bookstore, magazine shop or gourmet store. You can find a complete list of stockists at cherrybombe.com. 

Team Cherry Bombe is on the road this summer and they might be coming to a city near you. They're hitting cities from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon for special dinners, networking events, and even women who grill celebrations. It's all part of the Cherry Bombe Summer Series. Learn more and get your tickets at cherrybombe.com. 

Let's check in with today's guest, Marissa. So, happy to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk corn tortillas and flour tortillas with you and so much more.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Thanks for having me.

Jessie Sheehan:
So, you grew up in Sonora and one of the most agriculturally important areas in all of Mexico, and because of that I've read that you have said that corn is like everything, your life reminding you of your parents and your loved ones. Can you tell us about that relationship with corn, particularly when you were a child, your memories of standing in line to get tortillas?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yes. Just in general, tortillas are everything in Mexico, right? So yeah, I have beautiful memories of just growing up in Sonora and walking to your local tortilleria, which is only a couple blocks away and it seems like every two blocks there's a tortilleria. And you just walk every single day and go and get your daily tortilla just like you would get in France, you get your daily bread. The aromas of the corn, just something that is just so special for me.

Jessie Sheehan:
And also, I guess listening to the grinding of the masa.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, you'd listen to the grinding and the screech of the machines.

Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So, I should picture a tortilla almost being like a bagel in New York City or croissant in France and you would eat it. I know you described maybe one with salt. Should I just picture just a plain tortilla with a little bit of salt on it and that's like a yummy morning snack?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. They call it Taco De Nada, taco of nothing or Taco De Aire just filled with air. And so, basically what you do is just roll up your tortilla, if you want to you can put a little salt and if you're lucky you get butter.

Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And when you were little, would you have been in line with your mom or your dad or would you have been by yourself?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. Most of the time it was with my mom or with a housekeeper. My mom worked, she was a professor my dad was a lawyer, so they were always busy. And so, we had a housekeeper that just took me everywhere. And so yeah, I used to walk with her and she was amazing and she was an amazing cook as well.

Jessie Sheehan:
So, your parents when you were growing up instilled the importance of your heritage and the celebration of your culture with you in all sorts of ways, but in a particular way over the summer. Can you tell us about what you did with your mom and dad over the summer?

Marissa Gencarelli:
What's funny is it was torture when I was young. I can recall as far as when I was probably four or five years old, and it happened until I was 12 years old because by then my older brothers got too old and they refused to go on those trips. But my dad being an attorney and my mom being a school teacher, they were off for the summers. And so, they would pack us sardines in a Nissan Datsun with no air conditioning and we would drive all the way from northern Mexico all the way to the tipi south of Mexico, which is Merida. And I mean it's hot and back then the roads weren't what they are today, there was no beautiful stops or anything like that. But what we did do is my dad was a big foodie and so he would go in all these different carretas, he would know every single place-

Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us what a carreta is.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Carreta is basically almost like a taco stand off the streets and es carreta because it's made of wood, basically how it used to be dragged around with horses. It was carried with horses, so it's carreta. So, he would know all these different places that we could go ahead and really learn about the cuisine of Mexico from region to region, because it is dramatically different from one place to the other.

Jessie Sheehan:
When you were older, you ended up meeting your husband in Italy and then moving to Kansas City with him where he's from, he's American, yes?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yup.

Jessie Sheehan:
And you started a family in Kansas City, but you kept traveling back to Mexico, because you wanted to almost like relive those car trips with your parents. But you wanted that for your son so he could pass on that kind of cultural love and understanding of the country. But after a while, I think your feelings about those trips changed, they weren't just about your son anymore. Something shifted a little bit. Can you tell us about the shift?

Marissa Gencarelli:
I think a lot of the shift of, obviously both of my parents passed by the time I was 20, so that really changed everything. I think a lot of the shift for me was just realizing that after so many years living in the Midwest, how much I missed just the food. I love the Midwest and I love my friends and family there, but it was something different that I just did not have. And I do like working there and having all this community, but then the food was missing.

Jessie Sheehan:
What shifted is not only wanting to expose your son to Mexico, but also a desire for you to bring back authentic Mexican cuisine, which is essentially culture back home to Kansas City. And I know that you were always bringing your high-quality tortillas back so you could enjoy these authentic meals at home. But when you ran out of them in Kansas City, there wasn't really an alternative.

Marissa Gencarelli:
And I always joke I didn't eat tortillas.

Jessie Sheehan:
And then nearly, I guess was it about a decade ago where you began cooking the tortillas by yourself, improvising at home and was it that spurred the idea of opening your own?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, it's exactly that. We started cooking at home and we're missing the tortillas, and so we started experimenting and always people ask me, "Oh, is this your family recipe?" No, no, no, no, not at all. Most Mexicans, we don't make our own tortillas, you have tortillerias. If you ask French people, they're not baking their own baguettes, they have places to buy them. And so, it was the same thing, so I started just googling and trying to figure out how to make these things. It's a lot more complicated than what it looks. You see it in a video and it looks pretty easy and then I was like, "Oh, not so easy."

Jessie Sheehan:
Your husband and you at this point both had these big corporate jobs and now you had a second kid by this time, but you were motivated to consider opening this business. He was just more like supporting you, he loves you so much? Or was he also like, "Yes, tortillas?"

Marissa Gencarelli:
Oh no, he's quite a baker, he's quite a baker. We always joke, I think he might be better baker than I am because he is very by the rule of how everything, and I'm more of like a cook. I like to just go buy flavors and intuition and he is very much precise science.

Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that. So, then you guys ended up opening up Yoli, the bakery was a 2023 James Beard Award-winning bakery, which is fantastic. Congratulations to you.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Thank you.

Jessie Sheehan:
One thing that really stuck out for me when I was doing a little bit of research about you and Yoli was the branding and the icon of the business is very meaningful. Can you tell us about that?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So, we were looking for something that was really obviously meaningful. The icon is my mom and so the designers took a picture that we had from my mom. She's leaning in some, I think it's a galaxy car, which I don't know if you've ever seen those. And she's wearing a Pucci scarf and bell button pants and stuff like that. And they're somewhere in the middle of Mexico, you can just see the mountain range. And literally they took the picture and made it into the icon. And if you look at our packaging, the different corn varieties, you'll see different landscapes of Mexico and that just symbolizes all the travel.

And Yoli itself. It means to live in Nahuatl, which is the Aztec language. It's all about to live adventurously, try new things.

Jessie Sheehan:
In the store, you're sourcing mostly local and seasonal Midwest ingredients, but honoring very traditional tortilla making practices, I know you opened with an intention to create these very flavorful tortillas and also to share sort of the OG story of tortilla making. Can you tell us about the project you're working on with the University of Missouri?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, it's a very fun project. There was this farmer person that was out first in Hawaii and he was trying how to adapt different types of corn in Hawaii. And so, we met via Instagram and one day he sends me a message and says, "I'm in Kansas City and I have the University of Missouri researchers. Would you want to meet them?" And so, "Yes, of course I would come." So, I gave them a tour and we started talking and what they're really working on is how to go ahead and adopt different heirloom varieties of corn from all the Americas, all the way from, it could be from Peru and all the way from North Carolina.

And how to go ahead and make sure that they're more nutritious and they can be adapted to all the different types of terroirs. They're putting it in a database so all farmers can see what is the art of the possible. Pretty much all farmers farm either white or yellow corn. What they're trying to do is promote diversity and so every single time they have a harvest, they go ahead and send that to me and I'll go ahead and test it. And so, I go very specific on the pH that I'm doing or every single thing, and then I'll go ahead and grind it into the masa, make it into tortillas.

We try it as a team and we annotate what we think about it. And then I send all the tortillas and masa and everything to them. They get all those notes and all those notes get uploaded into the database.

Jessie Sheehan:
When you say you're checking the pH, and we'll talk about this in a second, but is that the lime?

Marissa Gencarelli:
The lime, yes.

Jessie Sheehan:
So, just making sure that you are very specific about how much lime to water, to the corn product-

Marissa Gencarelli:
To the specific type of corn because every corn acts differently. So, depending on specifically the pigmentation of the corn will change the flavoring and that will change how you treat it. You'll change the temperature and change the amounts of water and specifically the alkaline lime that you put in it. So yeah, it's really cool project, we're very proud of it.

Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.

Kerry Diamond:
Hi everybody, this is Kerry Diamond, founder of Cherry Bombe Magazine and host of Radio Cherry Bombe. Today's episode of She's My Cherry Pie, is presented by Nonino, the legendary family-owned Italian company from Friuli Venezia Julia founded in 1897 and known for its award-winning grappa. Since 1940, Nonino has been led by six generations of incredible women, starting with the matriarch Silvia Nonino, who is Italy's very first female master distiller and the first woman in the country to manage a distillery. Appertivo, Nonino's botanical Aperitif is based on an original recipe of Silvia's.

In 1973, her daughter-in-law, Giannola Nonino helped introduce the world to the first single varietal grappa. Jan's three daughters, Elisabetta, who is the CEO today, Antonella, and Cristina run the distillery. They revisited their family recipes to create Amaro Nonino, the bittersweet herbaceous liquor that is beloved by the world's top mixologists and an essential ingredient in the famous paper plain cocktail. And then there's Francesca Nonino, Giannola's granddaughter who is Nonino's global brand ambassador and helps out in the distillery. That is an incredible family tree. Visit grappanonino.it for recipes and information on Nonino's grappa varieties. That link is in our show notes.

Jessie Sheehan:
Now back to our guest. Okay, so now I want to talk more specifically about the recipes for both corn and flour tortillas and also for masa. But first I was wondering if you could tell us, besides the obvious corn tortilla made with corn flour, tortilla made with flour, what are the differences between them and why do you guys make both?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So, I mean just in general, corn, the actual plant was born in Mexico, right? So, it was teosinte, it's the origin name of it and it was a weed. It has been there from Mesoamerican times. And so, for Mexicans that was always a substance crop. And so, for us in Mexico, the corn tortilla has always been there. The Spaniards came in, they introduced wheat, and I'm from Sonora and especially the Jesuits went up all the way to Obregon and where I'm from and all these different places, beautiful valleys, in between mountains, and they thought that wheat would grow really well.

And so, even though I know technically the corn is the first tortilla in Mexico, wheat has been there for a long time, especially in the north part of Mexico. Both of them have a very different historical meaning. Obviously for me, the corn tortilla is the champion of going through colonization and we got rice and a lot of people think of Mexican cuisine, the rice and the beans and tamarind water and things like that. Well, a lot of those things were not native from Mexico, they came from the Spaniards and so we just simply adapted them.

But after you see all that, you still see the corn tortilla, which is like the original, the OG from Mexico. And I feel like for it to have survived all of that, that's amazing. And the flour tortilla, it has an interesting history, right? Because we know that the Spanish brought it in and maybe they were trying to make some Arab style breads, but the indigenous there said like, "No, no, no, we make tortilla and we make round things and thinner," and things like that. And so, we know that the first one was only the flour, water and salt.

Jessie Sheehan:
Do you personally prefer a corn tortilla to, I know you can't say what your favorite child is. So, does it feel like you can't say, "Oh, I love corn. Oh, I love flour."

Marissa Gencarelli:
For me, is what am I eating?

Jessie Sheehan:
I was going to ask, is there a certain application where you want flour and a certain application where you want corn?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. Being from Sonora, if I'm going to have a Sonoran style taco, which is Carne Asada, I only want flour. That's what we eat it with. When I'm eating seafood, I always want corn just because in Sonora is like that and Baha, California people will be mad at me because they like to eat it with flour. But in Sonora we always eat it with corn. So, it just depends.

Jessie Sheehan:
All right, I want to talk about your corn tortillas. I know you use a heritage variety of corns with all these different beautiful colors. Can you tell us about the white, the yellow, the red, the blue, and the slightly different flavors of each?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So right now, we manage over 13 varieties of corn and we do group them in white, yellow, blue, and red. White is always very mild in flavor, maybe a little bit of hint of nuts. The yellow, it always has that very corn forward flavor, so very fresh and also yellow corn always lends itself to fry better. Just in general when we are cooking it, we always notice that it takes a lot longer for it to absorb the water perhaps that's why it is always a better frying and you see a lot of yellow corn chips. And then blue corn is super earthy and there's a lot of different sub varieties under blue. We have all kinds of hues, we have some blues that will turn into baby blue and they're a lot less mushroomy.

But then we have some other really dark purple blues and they're in your face. They tell you, hello, I'm here to stay and just pair me with some cheese and that's it. And then red corn is the most interesting to me just because it has a sweetness at the end and people always think I'm crazy when I tell these different varieties of corn and how they taste differently. But we do a lot of progressive tastings with the corn tortillas and it's funny to watch them as they're tasting they're like, "Oh," and by the time you get the red, it does feel like it's dessert.

Red corn tortillas are great when you kind of juxtapose them with something completely different. So, like something a little bit sharper edges. We also like to use the masa harina that we make, we dehydrated our own masa, grind that up and we make beverages or use it for baking because it has that natural sweetness.

Jessie Sheehan:
I know you make masa using an ancient Aztec process called Nixtamalization. Can you tell us about how the Aztecs did it and what they discovered about those lime rocks in the water?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yes, it's fascinating. Obviously, we don't know pinpoint who did it, but the Aztecs are attributed to just standardization of it and it's believed that they were washing the corn in the riverbanks where there were stones and obviously there was residual of lime in them. And then they would go ahead and cook it, they noticed this chemical reaction and they quickly realized that, "Oh, and if we keep on cooking this, it turns into harmony," and they realize that there's more nutrients in it.

Jessie Sheehan:
Is that limestone?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, limestone. Yeah, from the limestones, yeah. So, yeah, it is just incredibly fascinating and as it went up, as people as indigenous travelled up north, you can see that they started doing wood ash. So, they figure out the same kind of reaction, they figure out, "Well, if the lime can do that, then we can do this with wood ash." Those things for me fascinate me, like the first person that opened a coconut or an oyster, it's just incredible. But yes, they're attributed to doing that and they're attributed also on just forming it into pasta, grinding it in a metate which is basically a volcanic stone. And they would grind the corn on that and then they would go ahead and do tamales and other things.

Jessie Sheehan:
I just wanted to understand that because you're taking your corn, you're soaking it, you're adding the lime, although they didn't need to because they were doing it in the water that already had the lime in it. Then when it's done, let's say when it's nixtamalized, it's soggy, it's wet, then it's dried and then it's ground?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So basically, so you get the corn, I always like to specify this is dent corn, so it's hard corn. And you put lime or wood ash and you put your amounts of water and then you bring that to whatever temperatures you want to put, so they're boiling it or whatever they're doing. And then you turn the heat off and you let it sit overnight. Then when you come back the next day, literally the outside layer of the corn, which is called pericarp gets gelatinous. And so, that's the reaction. So, when you go ahead and get it, you start rinsing that off. What happens to the corn? It just absorbs all those minerals in and so it just becomes very healthy.

Jessie Sheehan:
But texture wise, is it hard at that point?

Marissa Gencarelli:
It's soft, think of it like al dente pasta.

Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. You can't grind al dente pasta. So, is it then dried before it's ground?

Marissa Gencarelli:
No. Yeah, so we have a wet grind.

Jessie Sheehan:
A wet grind. I was trying to figure that out in my head how that was working.

Marissa Gencarelli:
No, you have a little dripper and it's constantly dripping water. And what we have nowadays is this two round stones that you put against each other and just how they do mashing of agave for tequila similar to that, but we have a motor.

Jessie Sheehan:
At which stage is it hominy?

Marissa Gencarelli:
So, if you Nixtamalize the corn, you rinse it off and then you cook it again, it becomes hominy.

Jessie Sheehan:
Got you. Okay, so I wanted to talk about the masa recipe. It's just three ingredients, water, lime, it's a chemical, it's not the fruit and corn. And you guys use when you're making your masa, you use non-GMO, organic dent or flint corn. Can you tell us what dent or flint corn is?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So, it's going to be the corn that it's a little starchier than your yellow corn that you'll eat at the street fairs. It also is led to dry in the cob. They'll go ahead and peel the husk out and they'll just let it dry and then after that they just go ahead and take it off the cob.

Jessie Sheehan:
Obviously you can get it locally in Kansas City. Could I get it locally and can you buy it online? How does it work? It's easy to find if people want to make their own.

Marissa Gencarelli:
You can certainly find everywhere in the United States, every single city, you'll have a farmer that's doing it. Most of them are actually growing corn, not for food consumption. The only thing that you have to make sure is that what are the cleaning practices? And that's when you get into the agriculture practices, right? Because a lot of them are just growing it for feed.

Jessie Sheehan:
But you could probably find dent or flint at a farmer's market?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, you could.

Jessie Sheehan:
This alkaline solution you've said, we can find it online or in a Mexican grocery store, easy to find. And basically, we're taking the corn, we're taking some water and we're taking some lime, we're boiling it to a certain temperature, turning off the heat and just letting it seep overnight. We're going to drain and rinse that outer gelatinous shell and that'll disappear. And now we have nixtamalized corn in the shop, in your store. You'll place it in your grinder with these volcanic stones. I saw them when I kind of Googled a video of it, but can you describe them for people?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So, it's a round stone. Also, flour milling uses the same type of technology, although there's a dry grind. So yes, you have two different stones that they have this carving, and have a hole in the middle, I guess I should explain because people are not seeing my hands. Two volcanic stones and they have all these carvings and it's basically the corn comes through the middle part, which is the big opening of the stone, and it just goes through the tiny crevasses you carve from the stone and we chill that stone by hand.

Jessie Sheehan:
Little grooves.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Little grooves. And so, all the masa, so they're opposing each other and we have a motor nowadays for it to run. And so, the masa is just dropping on the bottom and then you have a dripper of water to make sure that the stones are not sealing or so they can fuse together because they generate so much heat and they're very expensive too, so you don't want to do that. And so, you have a dripper of water.

Jessie Sheehan:
Is the volcanic stone important?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. That type of stone is very specific, it's a hard stone. The porosity of it won't get into the food either.

Jessie Sheehan:
And I know that if you're trying to do this at home, you could try and do it with a blender, like a Vitamix or a food processor with just a tiny, tiny bit of water because you don't want to get your masa too wet and you're grinding it finely. Then you're either using it immediately or storing it in plastic in the fridge and bringing it to room temp before using. And also, if you're trying to make this at home, if your masa is too wet, you can spread it on a plate, place it in the refrigerator, or even add a little masa harina to it and let it dry out a little bit. Can you just tell us what masa harina is in case people don't know?

Marissa Gencarelli:
So, masa harina is basically they take the fresh masa that you make and you dehydrate that. There's a lot of great brands here in the United States that you can find-

Jessie Sheehan:
Could find you mention a brand that you love.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, we love Bob's. Bob's is great. King Arthur has another one. So, they're all fantastic and high quality. So yeah, it's a dehydrated version of the masa, it's very fine.

Jessie Sheehan:
All right, now the corn tortilla recipe. So, we're going to start by kneading our masa, and if we didn't make our own masa, can we buy masa?

Marissa Gencarelli:
If you have a tortilleria area, go to the Mexican area of your city, do an excursion, and you will find a lot of tortillerias out there that will sell it by the kilo.

Jessie Sheehan:
Could you buy it online? Something like that?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Fresh masa would be hard to buy online. We do ship it to a lot of restaurants, which is crazy. But yeah, we do. You can also buy masa harina and just rehydrate it.

Jessie Sheehan:
With a little water.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, a little water.

Jessie Sheehan:
There usually directions for that on the back.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Oh, cool.

Jessie Sheehan:
And so, we're going to kneed our masa, we want it to be room temperature. If it's too dry because we made it homemade, we're going to add a teeny bit of water. So, is the proper consistency should I picture like play dough?

Marissa Gencarelli:
It's like play dough and then you should be able to roll it on your palm of your hand and I should not leave any residue, but you should still feel it a little wet. The trick with masa is like “Goldilocks.” It has to be just right, too wet it's going to stick all over. You're going to end up with oval type tortillas and if it's too dry, it's just going to crack all over for you.

Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to roll the masa into small bowls about an eighth of a cup each, which is like two tablespoons. And we're going to cover the bowls with a moist paper towel. Could we also use a wet dish towel?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah.

Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to preheat our comal to medium high. Can you tell us what a comal is and where we would buy them?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. Everybody has their own type of comal that they like. I personally love cast iron ones, so any of those lodge ones that you find out here in the United States, those work great. That's what I have, I have one that permanently sits in the top of my stove. But if you go to Oaxaca, they love the ones that are made with clay. Those are very finicky and be careful with the temperature. You have to gradually bring it up, otherwise it's going to crack on you. I had two of them cracked on me. And then there's covered steel ones as well.

Jessie Sheehan:
Does lodge literally make a comal or you can just use a lodge cast iron frying pan?

Marissa Gencarelli:
I use a lodge, it wouldn't be a pan because it's flat.

Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, like a griddle almost.

Marissa Gencarelli:
It's like a griddle. Yeah.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yup. It needs to be very hot. A drop of water on it should sizzle. And then we're going to place plastic or wax paper on each side of a tortilla press and then put our masa ball in the middle. Can you tell us a little bit about what a tortilla press is and where we might get one?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. So, you can find any tortilla press online. I actually really do love the square ones, Masienda has a great one. You just go ahead and usually they're made out of metal or aluminium. Stay away from the aluminium ones because you're going to press, press, press and you're not going to get anything out of it. Yeah, I really love the square ones. It's just basically two sides and you're going to press it and it's going to allow you to thin out your tortilla round perfectly.

Jessie Sheehan:
So, if we were looking for that, we would just get online and Google tortilla press.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. Even the major brands like Crate & Barrel and all those guys carry them.

Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to close the press gently and then open it and move the pressed masa within the plastic and wax paper 180 degrees because that will help keep it really even. Then we'll press again, then we're going to place the tortilla on the really hot comal, and once we see bubbles, we're going to flip it. And then we're flipping every five seconds.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yes.

Jessie Sheehan:
What are we looking for when we flip? Or is the idea just to keep flipping every five seconds? Worry more about the time than the visual?

Marissa Gencarelli:
No, we're more about the visual. So, worry about the bubbles and obviously you don't want to burn one side or the other. You're just basically trying to make sure that it's cooked through. And so, what I like to do is just constantly flip it until I'm seeing all those little bubbles and then I flip it again, I see bubbles, I flip it again. And then the last flip that you'll have is where I leave it. You're already seeing bubbles on both sides, so that's already being cooked on both sides. But then you want to make sure that the middle is cooked and that's when you live it a little bit longer and the gigantic bubble is going to come up. And that in Mexico we call it pancita, little belly.

Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to talk about that in a second, I'm obsessed with the little belly. So, you've said that this entire process should only take about 10 to 15 seconds and that often if people complain that their corn tortilla was so hard, but it's because they're cooking it low and slow and that is not the low corn tortilla should be cooked. I also read that some methods will include spraying the tortilla lightly with water or oil or clarified butter. But you guys don't do that.

Marissa Gencarelli:
I don't do that, and that's also for reheating. So, a lot of people do that for once you're done cooking your tortillas and they want to reheat them, a lot of people want to reintroduce moisture to it. It's fine, that means that your tortilla might age a little bit, it might not be as fresh and that's totally okay. I just personally have never felt the need to do that. But I have seen some chefs that do the clarified butter and of course your taco's going to taste even more delicious.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Bottom line, the key, your key is for high heat and fast. Now, tell us about that puff, the steam gets trapped I know. But tell us a little bit more about why the puff is important and this idea that there's actually a right side, not a wrong side, but there's actually a side of a tortilla. The sides differ and the difference is important.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. And a lot of people do not know that. So yeah, so the puff of the tortilla, and I call it the pancita, basically what it assures is that it's cooked inside. So, nobody wants to eat a tortilla that's raw on the inside, that would not be pleasant. And plus, your taco probably would fall apart. So, once you get the big puff off of it, you're holding your tortilla in your hand. So, the side that did not puff is facing your palm. The little puff is facing you and that's where you're going to put all your meats. And what it's going to do is just soak up all those juices, whether you're making carnitas or whatever it is, that's the purpose of it too, it's just going to soak it all up. And when you pick up your taco, it's not going to break apart which is so interesting.

Jessie Sheehan:
I know, I love that, it acts as a sponge with your salsa or the meat. So, then we're going to put our cooked tortilla into a tortilla warmer. Can you tell us about a tortilla warmer and is there something like a cloth tortillero?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah. There's a lot of different tortilla warmers. There's like the plastic ones, there's the ones that are cloth and they have some sort of, I know it's not aluminium but they have something inside and you can find those in Walmart and they're wonderful. Those are actually the best ones because they just have something that really keeps your tortillas very warm. But if you don't have any of that, I always recommend people, especially if you're having a large party and you want to warm up all your tortillas. I warm all my tortillas and then put them in three because usually people are going to have three tortillas and I wrap them in foil really nice and tight, and then I will wrap them around in a dish towel and that's plenty.

Jessie Sheehan:
And keep them that way.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah.

Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So now, I want to talk about flour tortillas. In your bowl you're going to sift some flour. Is it all-purpose flour?

Marissa Gencarelli:
So, this is where this gets really tricky and so, we have to be very specific. The type of tortillas that I make are Sonoran style. So, the rest of Mexico makes them different and in Sonora, we are snobby about it because we believe that we created the tortilla. So, we think that everybody else does it wrong. So, if you went anywhere else in Mexico, they'll put baking powder, for example, we don't. We don't put baking powder, we don't put anything on it other than the very basic things. So, any mixing bowl, the flour, the protein, it really makes a difference.

Jessie Sheehan:
So, is It bread flour?

Marissa Gencarelli:
So, you want lower protein, the higher the protein is going to break on you. So, we do our own blend, of course. I would always recommend people, I always like Bob's Red Mill, all-purpose. And then I would get a pastry flour and then blend that. You can do a 30/70, 70 being all-purpose 30, try to get usually between 11% to 12% protein.

Jessie Sheehan:
I do this thing if I don't have cake flour, which is similar to what we're talking about. For every cup of all-purpose flour, I'll remove a tablespoon of it or two tablespoons and add corn starch instead and that helps bring the protein down.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yes, exactly.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So, we have our bowl, we're going to sift some flour which is pretty low protein and some sea salt. Why not kosher salt?

Marissa Gencarelli:
You could use kosher salt, Sonora is by the Gulf of California so we have a lot of sea salts right there, beautiful.

Jessie Sheehan:
And now we're going to add pork fat or vegetable shortening or avocado oil. And why the choices? Why is it nice to have the vegetable shortening the avocado oil or the pork fat?

Marissa Gencarelli:
So now, in modern day Sonora, now everything is done with shortening. Nobody's using any animal protein or any avocado oil primarily because it's cost prohibitive and also temperature wise. Sonora is a very hot state, humid, it's just not worth people's time to have spoilage. The traditional one, the OG was, I didn't even have any fat. And then eventually probably it was beef tallow and then pork. So, there's a bunch of different variations, they all work. So, it's whatever you prefer. So, if you're not into doing shortenings, then I would recommend using avocado oil.

You can have a really good beautiful pork fat, I would recommend using a pork fat. We use a very specific pork fat it's all from Berkshire pork that they're raised beautifully in Missouri. The processing that they do is just so fine that you could bake anything with it and it's delicious. And so, that's the key for it.

Jessie Sheehan:
I love the packaging, the way you sell your tortillas and there's a picture of an avocado, I don't know if it's a picture of a pig.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Pig. Yeah, it's a picture of pig.

Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And then you're going to mix the flour and the salt and this fat, whichever one you choose by hand. So, I had two questions. First of all, why by hand? And second of all, even at Yoli, you're doing it by hand?

Marissa Gencarelli:
No, no, no, no.

Jessie Sheehan:
But at home you would recommend you do it by hand?

Marissa Gencarelli:
At home, I would recommend you do it by hand. I guess you could do it, you can definitely use probably a-

Jessie Sheehan:
Stand mixer.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Stand mixer. You could do your hook, I would use your hook paddle. But yeah, I always do it by hand. I also do my pizza dough by hand just because I feel like I get a better texture of it and I just can never get the timing right. When it's with a machine, I feel like it goes so fast and then you can go too far.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I always say, it's a cliche but that your hands are the best tool in the kitchen always. Then you're going to slowly add some hot water while you're continuing to mix. Is it just hot tap water or is it boiled water?

Marissa Gencarelli:
I go ahead and bring my water to boil and then I turn it off. And then as soon as I can actually touch it without burning, that's when I start putting it in.

Jessie Sheehan:
And the dough at this point will be stretchy, like pizza dough?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah.

Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to keep needing it for about eight minutes. Again, you could do it in a stand mixer, but you would just be very anxious about overdoing it.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yup. I would definitely reduce the time by a lot.

Jessie Sheehan:
And then you're going to divide the dough into 12 balls and you're going to place the balls on a floured sheet pan. Do you have a preferred kind of sheet pan? Do you like heavy duty one with-

Marissa Gencarelli:
I love those Nordic ones.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, Nordic wear is great. Place the balls on the floured sheet pan lightly covered with plastic wrap and let them rest for about 30 minutes. And are we flouring with the same flower that we put into the recipe? On the floured surface we're going to use a rolling pin. I wondered if you had a preference. Do you like ones with handles? Do you like ones with tapered ends?

Marissa Gencarelli:
No. I'm a handle person and my husband is the one without handles. So, I feel like it's such a personal thing. I am very petite and have very small hands and I just feel like I can never get it right with the larger ones.

Jessie Sheehan:
And you're going to use that rolling pin to flatten the balls into discs, rotating the tortillas until you have that round shape. And I assume getting it super, super, super thin is important. How many inches should we be thinking about? I know the height is going to be harder to get, but it's like each of these balls going to be about?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Probably six inches.

Jessie Sheehan:
Six inches. Then we're going to stack our uncooked tortillas with pieces of wax paper in between them. Do we cover them at this point or are we worried about them drying out?

Marissa Gencarelli:
No, because you have the fat in there. And I always tell people, that's why the flour tortilla is so much more accessible because it has that fat in that gives you a lot of forgiveness.

Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to cook them, we're going to get a comal, or we can just use a cast iron skillet if we happen to have one of those lodge. And then over medium heat, we're going to, I guess do we get it super, super hot same way we do with corn?

Marissa Gencarelli:
With the flour, I would get lower. So, I would do a medium high.

Jessie Sheehan:
Medium high. And then we're going to cook until we see some tiny bubbles. And this time it takes longer, it might be about 20 seconds.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yes. And then flip it.

Jessie Sheehan:
And then we flip, cook for about 15 seconds and we're going to flip until we see our puff.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Pancita.

Jessie Sheehan:
Pancita. Until we see our pancita and then we're going to transfer the tortillas into our warmer, our tortillero or just wrap them in a kitchen towel and we're done.

Marissa Gencarelli:
And you're done. Yeah, at home it's very different because I was thinking the temperatures, so my ovens at Yoli, they're set at 650. So, it's just a different, because we're just doing it so fast so it's just a different process.

Jessie Sheehan:
And sometimes you even like to play with flavor. Yes? As long as, I guess you said as long as the moisture of the flavor of whatever component you're adding isn't too wet, so it doesn't change. But you described Chipotle paste and chives and beets. Tell us about some of the ingredients.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Oh, god. We've done all kinds of different things. We love doing a poblano one, which basically we take the poblanos, do a really fast high heat roast, take all the skins off, take all the veins out, all the seeds out, and then we just blend that. With that, you're also getting additional fiber, so that's when it gets a little bit complicated playing with a dough as you're adding. So, I always recommend people adding it just little by little until you get the right consistency and the right flavoring.

Jessie Sheehan:
Can you add to both, either corn or flour?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, you can add to both. And the other technique that we like to do nowadays, a lot at home and also at Yoli. We'll do the poblanos, we'll roast our poblanos, do all that, blend it and then we just go dehydrate them and then make it into a nice powder.

Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us about some of the things that you make with tortillas besides making a taco or there things that you're selling at Yoli that use tortillas in creative ways?

Marissa Gencarelli:
Oh gosh. Well, we do all the traditional things, all the tacos and enchiladas and things. But the tortilla, the flour discs that we were just talking about, you can actually use that. Don't cook it and you can use it for empanadas. And so, you can do some beautiful ground beef and picadillo with potatoes and whatever else you want to put in it. And then you can go ahead and seal it and do a beautiful braid on it and you can either bake it in your oven or you can fry it, deep-fry it. So, we do a lot of different things. Okay, what can we do with this?

With the masas when we play a lot more with the corn masa, because that really lends to just anything you want. You can go ahead and do it. We also dehydrate a lot of our fresh masa to do a lot of baked goods, so we do a lot of different cookies. We also do conchas, and so the cross of the concha will all be like masa. And so, it's just different earthy variations of traditional cooking that you would think of Western cookie, we will do it with masa.

Jessie Sheehan:
I had an incredible corn cookie like cookie made with masa harina, chocolate chip cookie that blew my mind. I had no idea what kind of incredible, it was almost butter... I mean cookies are butter... But it was almost like this buttery rich, oh my gosh I love it.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Yeah, we do a lot of those. We do one with the masa, which is basically we inoculate the nixtamalized corn and then we go ahead and ferment masa and then we let it ferment for several months. We come back, make sure that there's a really super fine grind and we make cookies with that as well. Or we also use that for our actual concha dough, which is really brioche. But we all use that for that and it just gives it a very good flavor.

Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Marissa. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.

Marissa Gencarelli:
Thank you for having me, muchas gracias.

Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European-Style Butter and Nonino for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcast or Spotify and tell your pals about us. Visit cherrybombe.com for today's recipe. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Elizabeth Vogt. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our content operations manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.