What a great time we had at the Matza bakery on Wednesday!
When our forefathers left Egypt, they were in such a hurry that there was no time to wait for the dough to rise. They therefore ate matzah, unleavened bread. With only this food (but with great faith), our ancestors relied on the Almighty to provide sustenance for the entire Jewish nation—men, women and children. Each year, to remember this, we eat matzah on the first two nights of Pesach, thereby fulfilling the Torah’s commandment, “Matzot shall you eat . . .”
The Humblest of Foods
Matzah symbolizes faith. In contrast to leavened bread, matzah is not enriched with oil, honey or other substances. It consists only of flour and water, and is not allowed to rise. Similarly, the only “ingredients” for faith are humility and submission to G‑d, which come from recognizing our “nothingness” when compared with the infinite wisdom of the Creator.
One of the holiday’s primary obligations is to eat matzah during the Seder.
First we all got special baker hats and aprons to wear.
Next we all sat on the floor and watched the process of making flour to be used for the Matza.
We were shown real stalks of wheat!
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| Chaim and Michelle had a chance to hold them |
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| Chaim and michelle then took the kernels off the stalks |
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| Matthew blew on the kernels so all the unwanted pieces would fly away |
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| We added the remaining kernels to a grinding machine and ground it into flour |
The entire process of making matza , meaning, from when the water and flour come in touch with each other , must take less than 18 minutes for it not to become Chametz. Chametz is any food product made from wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt, or their derivatives, which has leavened (risen). Our sages have determined that flour from any of these five grains that comes in contact with water or moisture will leaven, unless fully baked within eighteen minutes. As we are commanded by the Torah, if a food contains even a trace of chametz, we don’t eat it, we don’t derive benefit from it, and we make sure not to have any of it in our possession for all the days of Passover.
Therefore, the flour and water at the matza bakery are kept totally separate, usually in different rooms untill ready to be timed and combined.
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| chaim poured in the water |
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| Daniella poured in the flour |
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| Michael helped to mix the flour and water into matza |
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| We all got a rolling pin to roll out our matza dough |
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| We made holes in our dough to prevent it from rising. |
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the baker put our matza into the special oven
While our Matza was getting ready we watched an interactive musical show of the story of passover |
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The plague of frogs
We heard our favorite song playing "one morning king paroah woke up in his bed ...etc) |
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| Now our matza was ready to take home! |
