[Avodah] Hard Matza, Most Mehudar Soft Matza

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 01:48:44PM +1000, Meir Rabi wrote:
: The MBerura adds that this test can be performed only when the Matza is
: still warm out of the oven. I dont understand this. Is the MB suggesting
: that if the Matza was not fully baked when it came out of the oven, i.e.
: there would have been stringy doughy threads, then after it has cooled it
: will longer have such threads?
...
: Furthermore, the MB adds a second test, poking the Matza with a finger (or a
: skewer) to see if any dough sticks, again limited to being tested whilst
: still warm from the oven.

The MB post-dates thin matzos. I think the CC is saying that if the dough
isn't fully bakes but is bakes enough to turn into a cracker through
drying, the lack of threads appearing when you crack the cracker doesn't
prove anything. The threads have to be gone through baking.

: I think this all points towards the Matza being soft even after it has
: cooled. I would have thought that the MB would say in discussing these
: matters, something along the lines of, these days the custom is to bake
: Matza until hard and crisp, which he apparently does not.

But we know from contemporaries. Matzah got progressivly thinner, and
the docking holes progressivly closer together, during the 18th cent.
The cripy matzah has to predate the machine matzah, which means 1838,
invented by Isaac Singer (the sowing machine guy).

I agree it's new, but I would date crispy matzos to the 18th cent, not
the 20th.

(What a far cry from my early posts on the subject, when I argued it had
to predate the Council of Nicea!)

: I have produced last year and will PG produce next year soft matza that is
: less than 1 mm thick, machine made, produced in less than 40 seconds, whose
: dough is idle in total for not more than 5 seconds, the oven conveyor belt
: is constantly being cleaned and kashered on its return journey and in view
: of these considerations, I think is probably the most Mehudar Matza
: available in the world today.

Except for those who feel the rei'usah in lishmah WRT machine made offsets
all this extra caution in timing, at least for the seder's matzos mitzvah.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
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