If you ask anyone on the street whether you should use corn or flour to make superior tortillas, you’re likely to get varied answers that will depend on where you are in the world. If you’re in northern Mexico, for example, you might discover that more locals prefer flour, whereas in central Mexico, people keep the tortilla tradition alive with corn.

So when you’re considering corn versus flour mixtures on a tortilla press, how does each ingredient fare? And what does this mean for the flavor and versatility of these two staples of Latin food?

Strength of the Tortilla

If we take a moment to consider the composition of corn- and flour-based doughs, we see something similar yet drastically different. A flour tortilla can be made as large as necessary, as flour contains more gluten bonds to keep everything stuck together. These gluten bonds also determine how many toppings the tortilla can handle. Corn-based tortillas—which are made up of only water, corn masa, and limestone—typically can’t handle as many toppings.

When you press flour dough onto a tortilla press machine, the tortilla will come out uniform and perfect every time. Corn-based tortillas tend to be grainier, flimsier, and more rugged. Both doughs can also be challenging to work with on a tortilla press. They both tend to stick, and all tortillas have a way of falling apart no matter what size they are. Some people use wax paper to allow the molds to push the dough without it sticking to the metallic parts of the press.

These are all things worth considering when you’re making tortillas so that you know how to serve them and what to serve them with.

Outcome of the Flavor

Because corn tortillas are grainier in texture due to how they corn is milled, they have a completely different mouthfeel. But they also contain an additional ingredient—limestone—that activates a unique flavor that flour tortillas cannot match. When cooked, the corn has a unique flavor profile due to the sugars in the corn masa blending with the limestone, which creates a whole new compound.

Flour tortillas, on the other hand, can burn easily, but they also char well, which gives them additional depth of flavor.

Healthier Option

Because flour has so much gluten, flour tortillas will contain many more sugars than corn tortillas. This automatically makes corn the healthier choice.

There will always be conflict when talking about corn versus flour mixtures on a tortilla press, but that’s only so that we can figure out more about why we might prefer one over the other.