I’ve never actually baked it, and to be honest, until this morning I didn’t even know it existed. (I say that with a certain amount of shame). Pan de Muerto is a “…round loaf shaped like a skull” that is, as I understand it, commonly placed on altars for the dead during Día de los Muertos.
It was particularly interesting to see that article this morning as I have, for the last several days, been thinking about bread and memory, both personal and cultural. In the Jewish culture, the one that I know best, bread is central to how we remember who we are and where we came from .
The holiday of Passover centers around matzah, the unleavened flatbread over which we tell the story of the genesis of the Jewish people. At the Passover seder we wrap the long and complicated telling of our history around this most simple of loaves.
And there are other cultural connections. Every Friday night many Jewish families around the world bake Challah. There are a whole world of different recipes, yet each family makes a loaf that connects them to their ancestors back through the years. I strongly remember, when I was at the early stages of deepening my Jewish practice, that I was holding the two loaves over which we say a blessing on Friday night, and the strongest sense came over me that this simple blessing over these two loaves connected me to my grandparents, and their parents, and their parents, and on and on back and back to…the matzah baked when leaving Egypt, or the pita that my Syrian great, great, great, great grandparents blessed and ate at their Sabbath table.
Every time I go into a proper bagel shop (this is usually in New York, even though I believe that it is possible to make a decent bagel in other places), the smell reminds me of the many times I’ve stood in line buying bagels for family and friends. It also reminds me of going into a bagel shop with my father when I was a little kid and him telling me that the smell reminded him of the bagels of his youth.
Connections. It is one of the amazing things about food, and breads in particular. A croissant can remind you of a particular breakfast in bed 30 years ago, and a loaf of cranberry bread can remind you of celebrating holidays with people who are no longer with us. Or the drives my wife and I took when we first moved to Sonoma County, stopping at Wild Flour Bread for a loaf of their cheesy fougasse on our way to the ocean.
And a loaf of Pan de Muerto can connect you to ancestors who are gone, and yet not gone.
I think this is why they say when you are selling a house that you should bake bread before showing a house. The smell, they say, will make a house feel like a home. And no wonder, the smell and taste of bread can connect us to our memories, and histories like few other things.
These are some of the bread memories – both personal and cultural – that I have. What are yours? I’d love to hear of the cultural and personal connections that you have when smelling or eating bread.
Image from: https://www.wideopeneats.com/recipes/pan-de-muerto/ – (Let me know if you don’t want me to use it)
The sourdough backlash has begun. Countless people who began their quarantine by making a starter and delving into the world of bread baking are now turning their backs on their starters, tired of the daily chore of feeding and caring for their new pet. With yeast hard to find, this is a good time to delve into the world of unleavened bead.
…which works out well for me as I had been planning on doing some matzah recipe testing after Passover anyway.
A good day’s work testing matzah recipes.
Thinking Outside The Box This whole matzah baking enterprise resulted in a real change in my thinking about matzah. I grew up in a square-matzah world. Until about 15 years ago, I didn’t know there was any matzah other than the flat, dry, square, white kind that came in a box and never goes stale. Fifteen years ago I was introduced to the big, round, hand-made, whole wheat “shmurah matzah” that many communities use at passover. This was a matzah revelation, one that has been sustaining us at Passover ever since.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love the square, cracker-like matzah, and we eat a lot of it throughout the year. But not knowing that any other kind of matzah existed was like loving bread, but thinking that white loaf bread was the only kind of bread that exists.
As it turns out, that hard, square, machine-made matzah that I grew up with is only a couple of hundred years old. (The actual matzah I ate wasn’t a couple of hundred years old, just the process). Because it’s cheaper to make and incredibly shelf-stable, it quickly replaced hand-made matzah throughout much of the Jewish world. The now obvious truth, that was a shocker to me, is that for most of history matzah was soft and bread-like, rather than hard and cracker-like. In fact, there are many communities that still eat soft matzah for Passover.
Why then, I ask myself, am I only eating the hard cracker-like matzah when I could be eating delicious soft-matzah?
Soft matzah. Not the stuff I grew up with.
A word of caution, if you care about Jewish Law There are lots of reasons NOT to make your own matzah for Passover. As this is a bread blog and not a blog about Jewish law, I’m not going to go into it. I will simply say, if you think you might want to make your own matzah for Passover, please check with your Rabbi before you do it.
You Learn Something New Every Day Making my own matzah was eye opening. It turns out that baking a simple flatbread is a great way to see some basic things about bread baking without quickly and simply. What difference does a change in the formula make, both in terms of the workability of the dough, and of the final product? For example, how is a 50% hydration dough different from a 90% hydration dough? What happens when you add oil or other fats to dough? How do you do the basic math to create or change a recipe? It doesn’t tell you everything about how those same changes will impact a sourdough or other leavened loaf, but for new bakers it’s a great way to start having the conversation. Even for experienced bakers it’s an interesting way to look at simple things like hydration and salt in a very pure way.
From now on, the first bread I bake with students new to baking is going to be matzah, or some other basic, unleavened flatbread.
Building a Recipe Originally I planned to find a couple of recipes, test them out, and then use the best of them. As I perused my baking books and the internet I realized that matzah recipes are all over the map. Recipes for both crisp and soft matzah had ratios everywhere from twice as much flour to water, to five times as much flour to water. Not much help. The two cookbooks I trust the most – Claudia Roden’s Book of Jewish Food and Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez’s The Hot Bread Kitchen – had recipes that were so wildly different that I decided to just create my own recipe from scratch a la Cooks Illustrated.
I decided to start with a basic concept of what is the essence of matzah. Then I’d choose a starting place based on all of the recipes that I had read, and what I know as a baker, and I’d work from there to try to make my best matzah. Because I’d never actually baked matzah before, my idea of what I was going for changed while I was working through the process. By the time I was done I had made 10 different versions of matzah. (Eleven, actually, but one was so bad I don’t want to talk about it). There were definitely winners and losers (aren’t there always), but I feel like I now have some good matzah recipes to make throughout the year, and at Passover, if I’m brave enough.
What Makes Matzah, Matzah Matzah exists on two planes, the technical and the aesthetic. Technically, for a flatbread to be matzah it needs to be completely unleavened. If I had to guess, I would say that what this originally meant was that you they didn’t add sourdough – which was what they used to make bread rise before commercial yeast existed. However, according to Jewish Law, the way we determine if matzah is completely unleavened these days is that it needs to take less than 18 minutes from the moment that the water touches the flour until the bread is in the oven.
The aesthetics of matzah are another story. Like most other things, I’m sure each person has their own vision of the perfect matzah. For my taste, matzah should be simple. For Passover it’s just flour and water, and for the rest of the year I’ll add a little salt, and that’s it.
Whatever you may be eating on your matzah, the matzah itself carries a deep cultural flavor that needs to come through. It is the bread of freedom – that the Jewish people ate in the wilderness when we were liberated from slavery. And it is also the bread of slavery and affliction that we ate when we were enslaved. It is the afikomen – the broken and hidden piece of matzah – that many of us searched the house for at the end of the Seder when we were kids. It is the memory of every seder we’ve ever been to, and all of the family that were there with us, and all of our ancestors at their Seders. It holds the flavor of the joys and trials of the Jewish people throughout history. In order to hold that history, it needs to be simple and pure.
So, that’s my goal. To make a simple, unassuming, unleavened flatbread, that you can make from water to oven in less than 18 minutes.
To find my matzah I tried different hydration levels (the amount of water relative to flour), and different flours and flour mixtures, and with and without salt. Some recipes I looked at added a little bit of oil, which I have to say made for a slightly more complex taste, and a slightly softer and more flexible matzah. Those are usually things I like in my bread, but for matzah I decided to stick to the simple and pure which was closer to my vision of what matzah should be.
There wasn’t just one matzah recipe that I liked. As it turns out, I like matzah both cracker-crisp, and soft and flexible, and made with different flours. Following are several recipes for different matzah that I really liked.
One of the things I really liked about this dough is that it’s very flexible and quite easy to make adjustments to. So, I highly recommend that you give yourself the freedom to play with these recipes to find the matzah that is both delicious to you, and that, perhaps, connects you to your past.
A Note on Baking Matzah Most of the recipes that I looked at had you bake matzah in a hot oven on a pizza stone or pre-heated sheet pan. I decided instead to use a cast iron pan on the stovetop.
My reasoning for this was culinary, historical and practical.
The main reason I decided to cook on the stove-top was that my vision for matzah, especially the soft matzah, is like that of other tribal breads that are baked in a tandoor, or on a saj, or just on a hot piece of metal over a fire. Cooking it this way allowed the bread to remain soft and supple, while also having crispy burnt spots.
That being said, if what you’re after is a crisp cracker-like matzah, baking it in an oven will dry it out more and may give you more of that crispy crunch you’re after.
This was the bread that the Jewish People at while they were fleeing Egypt. It seems unlikely that they were fleeing with huge bread ovens. More likely, they baked their matzah on metal or stones that were heated over fire, as is still the practice for many cultures, especially cultures with a nomadic history (or present).
Finally, if you are going to bake matzah for Passover, you will need to have whatever you cook your Passover matzah on be set aside just for making Passover matzah. This is much easier to do with an 8″ cast iron pan than it is with a whole bread oven (though people do have ovens that they keep separate just for passover).
The Recipes Let’s start with the instructions, which are the same for each of the matzah formulas.
Preheat your cast iron pan. I used a Lodge 8″ skillet. Preheat it for at least 10 minutes to make sure it’s nice and hot. The place that I did this recipe testing has a pretty weak stove, so I pre-heated it to high. If you find that your matzah is burning more than you like before it’s cooked, try lowering the temperature of the pan. If you are going to bake these in the oven, pre-heat to 500 degrees with either a pizza stone, or a sheet pan in the oven.
Measure out your ingredients. dry ingredients in one bowl, water (and oil if you’re using it) in another cup or bowl. Because you are going to be on the clock (remember, these need to be done in 18 minutes), you really need to have everything ready to go before you start.
Start your timer. If you care about making these in 18 minutes, start your timer just before mixing the water with the flour.
Pour the water into the flour and knead quickly until you have a uniform ball of dough, maybe two or three minutes.
Separate the dough into 100g pieces and roll into balls, which should be three per recipe. The balls are about the size of an egg.
Flatten one of the balls with your hand on a well floured surface. Then, using a rolling pin, roll out to a 2mm thick round. (A little thicker than a penny). While rolling out the dough, lift it from time to time and make sure that it’s well floured so that it doesn’t stick to the counter. If you prefer, you can also roll out onto a sheet of parchment which may make it easier to move to the pan or oven. It’s a lot like rolling out pie dough.
Prick all over with a fork. This is to make sure that the steam that is created when it starts to cook is released to it doesn’t puff up, which is the antithesis of matzah.
Lift the first piece off the cutting board into the pre-heated, unoiled, pan, making sure that it is flat in the bottom of the pan. I just picked up the pieces of dough with my hands, but you could also lay it over the rolling pin like pie dough, or roll it out onto parchment and then flip it over onto the pan.
Bake on each side until it is browned the way you like it, with dark burn spots, about 2 minutes on a side. If you are trying for a more cracker like matzah, you may want to bake at a slightly lower temperature for a little longer to dry it out a little more. Or, perhaps, you can just put it in a warm oven after it’s cooked to dry it out a bit more if that’s what you’re going for.
Remove from the pan and place between two dish-towels (or one folded over dishtowel) for soft matzah, or place on a cooling rack for matzah crackers. The towel keeps the matzah from drying out as much as it cools, which is what you want for soft matzah.
While the first one is baking, roll out the other balls so they are ready to pop into the pan as soon as the first one comes out.
Working fast, but not crazy-fast, I was able to make three matzot (the plural of matzah) by myself, in one cast iron pan, per 18 minutes. If you have more pans and/or more people, or, I suppose, are much faster than I am, you can do more.
The following formulas will make three matzot per batch. Obviously, if you want to make a larger batch just double or triple the recipe. Or, you can break out your fancy bakers math and remake the recipe for whatever size you want.
Note 1: If you can, get a scale. It’s really hard (read: impossible) to make consistent and reliable measurements using cups and tablespoons. If you really want to use volume measurements, King Arthur Flour has a very handy conversation chart that you can use to convert the recipes.
Note 2: Your situation in terms of humidity where you live, and the temperature of your pan, and any number of things may be slightly different from mine. Feel free to make adjustments to these formulas if they seem too wet or dry or like they’re cooking too fast or slow.
The Formulas Each of these recipes make 3 8″ matzah. I have listed both the weight in grams, and the bakers’ percentage. These are all pretty robust recipes, so feel free to play with them.
If you are not making matzah for Passover, I recommend adding some salt to your recipe as it greatly enhances the flavor. (If you are a person that likes plain, salt-free matzah, you probably already know that about yourself).
100% Whole Wheat Matzah
I was surprised that this was recipe that seemed most suited for a soft matzah to use at Passover. It has a deep matzah like taste, and a lovely chewy texture, while still being a little crispy on the outside.
Whole Wheat Flour: 171g (100%) Water: 133g ( 78%)
If you want to add salt to this, or any of these recipes, add about 2.2% salt, which is a little less than 4g.
White Flour Matzah Cracker
This is a dry, cracker-like matzah that’s reminiscent of the square boxed matzah (which, as I mentioned, I really like). In the possible Seder where I make my own matzah, I would probably serve both this and the 100% Whole Wheat to cover all of the matzah bases. This dough is kind of dry and crumbly at first, but it will come together with a little bit of kneading.
Bread Flour: 203g (100%) Water: 101g (50%)
White and Whole Wheat with Salt
We eat matzah all year round. This version gets my vote for everyday matzah. It’s super simple to bake on any evening you want some bread and don’t want to spend more than 18 minutes getting it ready. The addition of salt makes a big difference in the flavor.
If you want to try adding olive oil to this recipe, add around 9g and see how you like it.
Einkorn Matzah – The Real Thing
Einkorn and Emmer wheat were likely the varieties of wheat that the original matzah was baked from. As I have Einkorn on hand and can’t get Emmer at the moment, that’s what I used. Einkorn has a beautiful, soft nutty flavor that really comes through in these matzah. Usually Einkorn uses about 1/3 less water than white flour, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Einkorn Wheat: 185g (100%) Water: 120g (65%)
50% Rye Matzah
I tried this just on a lark and really liked it. The dough was a bit of a sticky pain to work with, but the resulting matzah had a really rich flavor, and, probably because the dough was sticky and harder to roll evenly, had a great mix of soft and crunchy bits.
Adjustments If you want to play around with these recipes to find the perfect matzah for YOU, these are some of the things you can play with. It’s a very forgiving dough, so even things that aren’t perfect are pretty good. (Not like a sourdough which, when it doesn’t work, really doesn’t work). – Thickness: Try rolling the dough a little thicker or thinner. – Hydration: Change the amount of water you use in the recipe. – Flour mix: Try making matzah out of different kinds of flour, and mixing them in different proportions. – Bake time and temp: Longer and slower as opposed to faster and hotter will give you different results. If you don’t care about the 18 minutes and just want a simple flatbread, you have lots of room to play here.
I love matzah. My wife loves matzah too. in fact even our Beagle Winston loves matzah.
Is that strange?
How much do we love it?
There is a custom not to eat matzah for a period before Passover – from 1 to 30 days – so that when you first eat it at the Passover seder it’s with extra joy and excitement. In the Rubinstein household, the month before Passover when we don’t eat matzah feels like the deprivation of something essential and life-giving. However, like winter in Pittsburgh (where I grew up and went to college), where the first spring day when it’s warm enough to go outside in a t-shirt is so glorious that it almost makes it worth the way-too-many months of winter spent indoors worth it, the first bite of matzah at seder after not eating matzah for a month is so delicious that it’s worth the month of deprivation.
Though I can’t imagine it, some people think matzah is something to endure once a year at Passover, and then block from their minds until faced with it again next year. They think of it as a flat, white square that tastes like cardboard and constipates you for days. Sure, you can grind it up and make it into matzah balls, and almost everyone likes matzah balls…that is unless the only ones they have had are the hard, dry, sit-in-your-stomach-for-days kind. (Yes, it’s true, some people like their matzah balls this way, but that’s something for them to take up in therapy).
In terms of cooked matzah, at lest traditionally, the highest form is Matzo Brei. The lowest, if you care about my opinion, are those soggy sponge cakes served at passover. (I’m sure your bubbie’s was great. No need to write.)
Did you know that not all matzah is white and square? Many people eat beautiful, hand-made, round, baked to a deep brown, shmura matzah. Other than being cracker-hard and dry, it shares few qualities with the square machine-made matzah that you are probably thinking about.
(Not my photograph)
And here’s a shocker (to some people at least), it’s likely that the original matzah was probably not hard like a cracker, but was likely soft like a…well, like a middle eastern flatbread (which it is). In fact, there are still communities that eat soft matzah, and an increasing general acceptance that soft matzah is okay to eat at Passover.
Soft matzah. (Not my photograph).
I thought of writing about matzah during Passover, which just ended, but I never got around to it. Perhaps I was too busy eating matzah to write about it. As my beloved wife always says, you don’t want to spend more time talking about your relationship than you spend having it. The same thing is true of matzah, it seems: You shouldn’t spend more time writing about it than you spend eating it.
My hope this year was that I would finish building my new oven just in time to bake matzah in it for Passover, and that we would get to eat home baked matzah this year. (While not going into the Jewish law of matzah baking too much, I wouldn’t be able to use the oven that I used for baking bread throughout the year for making matzah for Passover). For many reasons, that didn’t happen. Truth be told, for other reasons of Jewish law that I won’t go into, I wasn’t sure that baking my own matzah was really that good of an idea anyway.
My new, but unfinished oven where I was planning on baking my Passover matzah this year.
But now that passover is over, I can bake all of the matzah I want. So, I invite you to follow me down this strange journey into the land of matzah, where miracles happen, and battle lines are drawn, and the Metamucil flows freely.
The plan is to do three posts: The history of Matzah, recipes for baking matzah, and finally recipes for using matzah.
