Nixtamalization Lime & Masa Yield Calculator
Tell it how much dry corn you are cooking and it gives you the powdered lime to weigh out, the water to cover it with, and how much dough you will end up with. It also takes a recipe written in spoons per pound and tells you what strength that really is. Nothing uploaded.
Where the weight goes
Yields come from a moisture balance: the solids you start with are the only solids you finish with, and every weight change after that is water moving in or out.
Tortillas from this batch
Handed a recipe in spoons? Check what it really means
The answer is a range because the two published spoon-to-gram conversions for cal are about twice apart. Weighing the cal is the only way to collapse it to one number.
Every cal level, priced for this batch
Teaspoons use the heavier of the two published conversions, 3.33 g per teaspoon. Treat the column as a cross-check on a scale reading, not a replacement for one.
What the published recipes actually say
Take it to the kitchen
Copies the whole batch as plain text, assumptions included, so the numbers travel with the reasoning behind them.
Learn more: cal ratios and masa yield
Why the published ratios look like they disagree
Every guide quotes its cal dose in a different unit, and the units hide how far apart the numbers really are. Put them all on the same footing and the spread is the story.
BAKERpedia's nixtamalization entry gives the commercial range as "0.5-1.5% based on corn weight", with water at "150.0-300.0% (Lb / 100 Lb maize)". That is the widest authority here and it is stated as a percentage, which is the only form that survives a change of batch size.
Groundwork's home method gives "a 1.5:100:300 ratio of lime to corn to water" and calls the acceptable band 1-2% by weight. Breadtopia uses 5 g of cal to 500 g of corn, which is 1%.
Now a spoon recipe. Everyday Latina's tamale method calls for 2 teaspoons of cal to 1,190 g of corn. Run that through the converter above and it lands somewhere between 0.25% and 0.56% by weight, at or under the industry floor whichever spoon conversion you apply.
So two sets of instructions that both read like ordinary recipes, Everyday Latina's and Groundwork's 1.5%, sit somewhere between two and a half and six times apart in strength. Neither is wrong. They are after different corn and a different result, and neither page can tell you that, because they are not speaking in the same unit.
This is the whole argument for the percentage. A dose quoted as a percentage of the corn weight means the same thing in every kitchen. A dose quoted in spoons does not.
The converter is there to put any instruction you are handed on the percentage scale before you tip anything in. It gives you a band rather than a number, for the reason below.
Why a spoon of cal has no agreed weight
Cal is a light, fluffy powder, so a spoon of it weighs far less than a spoon of salt. The trouble is that the published conversions do not agree with each other, and not by a little.
Breadtopia states its 5 g dose as one and a half teaspoons, which is 3.33 g per teaspoon, or 10 g in a tablespoon. Tortillaworld instead says "For every 1 lb (454 g) of dried corn, dissolve about 1 tablespoon (roughly 4 to 5 g) of food grade Cal", which makes a tablespoon less than half that.
Both are describing the same white powder. The gap is packing: cal settles hard in a tub, and a scooped spoon against a spooned-and-levelled one really can differ by a factor of two.
That is why the converter shows a range. One tablespoon per pound reads as anything from 0.99% to 2.2% of the corn weight depending on which conversion you trust, which spans almost the entire usable band. Tortillaworld intends that instruction as a 1% dose, and on Breadtopia's conversion it lands past the ceiling instead.
No arithmetic fixes this, because the ambiguity is in the measuring, not the maths. A scale that reads to a tenth of a gram costs less than the corn and removes the problem permanently.
Where the yield numbers come from
The yields are a moisture balance rather than a rule of thumb. Corn solids do not multiply in the pot, so the only thing that changes the weight is water going in and hulls going out.
The moisture targets come from a 2023 Frontiers in Nutrition study on Mexican maize quality, which steeped its samples to 50% nixtamal moisture and then added water at the mill "to increase the masa moisture to 57%". The same study reported dry matter losses to the steep liquor of between 1.32% and 7.23% depending on the maize, which is where the 4% default sits.
That study also settles the cal question for its own batches: it used 30 g of lime to 3,000 g of corn, exactly 1%, which is why 1% is the default here.
Worked through with a kilogram of corn at those defaults: 1,000 g at 12% moisture is 880 g of solids, 4% of which leaves in the nejayote, so 845 g of solids carry through. At 50% moisture that is 1,690 g of nixtamal, and at 57% it is 1,965 g of masa.
The masa weighs more than the nixtamal it came from, which surprises people. The extra 275 g is the water the mill adds, and it is doing a job: without it the grinding stones heat the dough up through friction.
Reading the tortilla count honestly
The count is masa weight divided by the masa ball weight you pick, and the ball weight is the softest number in the whole calculation. A "6 inch press" is not a standard, it is a description.
At the 40 g default, a kilogram of corn gives 49 tortillas. Drop to 25 g balls for street taco size and the same batch gives 78.
A pound of corn at 30 g per tortilla comes out at 29. Breadtopia's recipe says 12 to 18 tortillas from 500 g of corn, and 500 g of corn gives about 982 g of masa here, so their 18 implies 55 g balls and their 12 implies 82 g ones. Their press is making something a good deal bigger than a taquería tortilla.
Weigh one ball off your own press once and the number stops being a guess.
What the tool deliberately does not tell you
It will not give you a cook time. BAKERpedia's range for the boil alone is 0.5 to 3.0 hours at 80-100 °C, and the steep runs 8 to 24 hours at 55-65 °C, because the right time depends on kernel hardness, batch size and what you are making.
Corn for pozole wants to stay whole and firm, so it comes off the heat earlier than corn destined for the mill. The usual test is the thumbnail one: a kernel should give under your nail with the hull sliding off, while the centre stays slightly firm.
It also does not model pH. The alkalinity of your batch depends on the freshness of the cal as much as the dose, since calcium hydroxide slowly reacts with air and weakens in an open tub.
FAQ
How much cal do I need per pound of corn?
At 1% of the corn weight, a pound of dry corn takes 4.5 g of cal. The published band runs from 0.5% to 2%, so the same pound could reasonably take anything from 2.3 g to 9 g depending on whose recipe you are following. Weigh it rather than spooning it: the two published spoon conversions for cal differ by about a factor of two, so one tablespoon per pound can mean either 0.99% or 2.2% of the corn weight.
What happens if I use too much cal?
Tortillaworld puts the line at 1.5% of the corn weight: push above it and the corn turns soapy and faintly bitter. If you overshoot, that is recoverable, since rinsing the corn three or four times instead of once washes most of the taste back out. Going the other way, below 0.5% the pericarp does not slip cleanly off the kernel. Cal is caustic as a dry powder, so use a food-grade product, keep it out of your eyes, and stir it into the water rather than tipping it onto hot corn.
How much masa does a pound of dry corn make?
Around 890 g, or just under two pounds, on the default assumptions here: corn at 12% moisture, 4% of the dry solids lost to the nejayote, and masa ground to 57% moisture. Most of that near doubling is water rather than corn, since the solids you started with are the only solids you finish with. At 30 g of masa per small tortilla that pound works out to about 29 tortillas.