[Avodah] What is Hard Matza - Difference between Baking and Drying

[Meir Rabi]

The ShO 461:3 discusses the point at which dough is baked. If there are no
Chutin NimShoChim, no stringy threads of dough stretching between the two
parts of a Matza that has been broken apart it is then considered to be
baked. Obviously this standard is far less than the standard we have today
of our Matza being baked to the point that it is rock hard.
How can one determine if the Matza if adequately baked without tearing it
apart?
The MBerura suggests that one can poke the Matza with a finger and if it
emerges from the Matza without dough stuck to it, we can be confident that
it is adequately baked. He then warns that this test only works when the
Matza is still warm from the baking, after it has cooled down this test is
not necessarily accurate.
Question 1: why is this so?
Is it because by that time such sticky dough would have already dried out?
In SK 14 the MBerura says the same about the test of tearing the Matza apart
and observing such threads.
So we do not have a reliable test upon which we can rely when the Matzos are
cool.
Question 2: do Matza bakeries randomly apply this test to warm Matzos?
Question 3: When we eat Matzos, are we actually at risk of eating Chamets
since we get them cold and they are untestable?

It seems that in order to avoid problems we bake Matzos from very dry dough,
rolled extremely thin, baked in very hot ovens and baked until they are rock
hard; this ensures that they bake very thoroughly without risk of any doughy
threads remaining.
But perhaps this is not the case. Perhaps what we are doing is not baking
the dough at all. Perhaps we are just drying it out very rapidly and we are
eating not baked dough but just dried out dough.
Is dried out dough Matza?
Is Matza perhaps only a dough that has been baked?
The MBerura discusses baking Matza on paper. Paper burns at 451 degrees
Fahrenheit, or 233 degrees Celsius. It appears that Matza was baked at
temperatures below the flash point of paper. This is not the case to day as
best I can determine through limited investigation. In fact some told me
that today the ovens are heated to double that temperature.
If the ovens were cooler and consequently the Matza was in for longer (and I
also am led to believe that their Matza was not quite as thin as is ours
today) it is very likely that the Matza was in fact baked and not just dried
out.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20100307/1bf241b7/attachment-0001.htm>