Matzoh matzoh man

Someone once said to me, “I wish I was one of those people that felt fulfilled by just putting my nose in a gemara and never coming out… but I’m not”. I plan on becoming a man who lives in a house made of books, but I’m definitely drawn to the parts of Torah/Torah-lifestyle that provide an opportunity to create “real” things. My response to reading commentaries on the construction of the mishkan was to try (impossible without nes-dik materials) and construct a diorama; my favorite holiday is succos, it’s the most “architectural” of the chagim. So when it comes to making my pesach meaningful activities like baking my own “bread of affliction” help make the chag more significant.

Here’s where a geshmak piece of shmurah begins:
Months ago we went out and harvested the grain using the same instruments that people have used to harvest since wheat was first domesticated. This year was particularly hard because we needed to harvest 2 years of wheat since it’s shmittah. I don’t have a picture of the next step, but the harvested wheat is put through a combine to separate the wheat from the chaff, and bagged for the next step.

Quite often there are aspects of non-Jewish life that create advantages for the frum world; from chapters in the Torah, or shas-pods. So B”H that there are survivalists and back to nature groups (read: nutjobs) who keep the hand-powered food preparation industry in business.

So at a rate of 8 cups every 5 minutes we used hand powered mills to grind the wheat down in two steps, first something resembling bulgur then into whole grain.


The recipe for matzoh is REALLY REALLY COMPLEX… in that it’s the simplest recipe ever.
Water+wheat in less than 18 minutes.
The first step is to mix the water and wheat together:

Then a shaggy ball is handed to one of three guys who slowly turn the mixture into a dough ball


Then it’s handed off to a series of “gomrim” who flatten the dough ball out in stages till it’s a thin disc.

The last step before the cooking is the “reidler” the guy who puts all the little holes into the matzoh.

Then it’s shoved into the oven.

Matzoh tastes best when it’s cooked until the very last moment before it’s about to burst into flames. Unfortunately even I, in my perfection, screw up occasionally and leave the matzoh in the oven past that last second… When that happened I yanked out the burning dough and flipped it into the air in the hope that the rushing air would put out the fire.

And the result is this:

The best parts of doing this is the feeling that I’m a small part of seders all over Yerushalayim, I learn a few more phrases in yiddish, and I'm sure that during the baking hours I'm doing ratzon H' ; the worst part is that the hair on my right arm is burned off.

Chag kasher v’sameach!

Labels: judaism, Matzoh, Pesach