By now, most of us are elbow grease-deep in cleaning our houses for Passover, and getting ready to make that big and most noteworthy of transitions — from cleaning to cooking. If you’re like me, the last thing you want is to take on even more work. (Unless, of course, it’s writing just a few sentences about your best seder ever and winning our contest.)
Fortunately, not everyone in the world is like me. My friend Mat just called, asking where in Brooklyn he can purchase special grown-for-Passover flour — he and a friend got a sudden urge to bake their own matzah. A five-hour drive (they live in D.C.) will be the least of their problems. MJL has an easy and convenient matzah baking recipe — and the folks at Sicha Basadeh were nice enough to show us their matzah-baking PowerPoint presentations. (The second one is about how Passover flour is made, and they can explain it way better than I can right here.)
Although, as our recipe explains, it’s
a) very labor-intensive
b) easy to mess up — remember, if you don’t thoroughly mix even one drop of water with one drop of flour and it’s hot for more than 18 minutes, it’s not officially matzah
and
c) time intensive
it’s also pretty rewarding. You’ll be doing the same thing our ancestors have done for millenia — and, if nothing else, this will be the bread of your affliction. And, as we blogged about yesterday, the heart of Passover really is a do it yourself holiday. So feel free to dive in, come up to New York (or wherever you can find it) for some Passover-safe flour, and make the holiday your own.
Or, of course, you could just enter our contest. And then you won’t have to worry about buying matzah for a while.
seder
Pronounced: SAY-der, Origin: Hebrew, literally “order”; usually used to describe the ceremonial meal and telling of the Passover story on the first two nights of Passover. (In Israel, Jews have a seder only on the first night of Passover.)
