All Souls Tortilleria

This Burlington-based bakery is a tortilla staple for Vermonters. Every week, bakers flatten fresh balls of dough in a wedge press before they go into a carousel oven, where they emerge puffy with air bubbles. 

Each week, the All Souls team simmers whole corn kernels with lime (calcium hydroxide) in a process called nixtamalization. After simmering, the corn steeps overnight, becoming nixtamal, or hominy. They grind the nixtamal with volcanic stones into fresh masa. Masa translates to 'dough,' and this dough can be made into tortillas, tamales, sopes, tlayudas, huaraches, memelas, and much more. Generations of indigenous people invented and perfected this way of cooking corn thousands of years ago.