Celebrating Passover with fresh baked matzah

Something special about Passover is each and every food on the seder plate tells part of the Passover story. This is especially true for matzah. The Torah tells us that we eat matzah because the Israelites didn’t have time to make leavened bread before their escape to freedom from Egypt. It’s no surprise then that matzah is supposed to be made very quickly - 18 minutes from start to finish - to prevent the dough from rising once it’s mixed with water.

Since there are only two ingredients needed - flour and water - making matzah is a good reminder that no one should ever go hungry. During our seder we say, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” Feeding everyone is the Jewish value Hazan et HaKol, and at Passover, it’s especially wonderful to start a family tradition to make extra matzah to share and to even deliver canned goods to a local food pantry.

Children are wonderful matzah bakers too! So let’s bake some matzah!

DIY Homemade Matzah

In addition to a mixing bowl, rolling pin, fork and large circle cookie cutter (optional), here’s what you’ll need to make your own batch of matzah (8 - 5 inch circles):

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup water (plus 1 TBS more, if needed to pick up the extra flour stuck on the bottom of the mixing bowl)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon olive oil (vegetable oil would work too)!
A sprinkle of all-purpose flour for dusting

Here’s how to make matzah:

Begin by setting your oven to 475 degrees, and place your baking sheet in the oven to preheat as well. Then…

1. Gather your ingredients, flour, water, olive oil and salt, and place them all in a large bowl.

2. Mix all the ingredients in the bowl with a fork until it resembles coarse crumbles (below). If needed, use one additional tablespoon of water to moisten and mix any leftover flour stuck on the bottom of the bowl.

3. Use your hand to knead the crumbles into a dough ball. I like to knead the dough directly in the bowl.

4. Take the kneaded dough out of the bowl and roll it into an 8 inch log on a lightly floured surface.

5. Cut the log into 8 - 1 inch circles.

6. Roll the each circle very flat. We used a large circle cookie cutter to get very clean edges on our dough circles.

7. Pierce the dough circle all over with a fork. Flip it over, and pierce the backside too. This will help it stay flat while baking and get extra crispy too.

8. Carefully place the round dough circles on the pre-heated baking sheet (the baking sheet will be hot). Set your timer for 2 minutes, then flip your matzah and bake for an additional 1 to 2 minutes. Matzah can burn quickly, so be sure to keep an eye on it once it’s flipped! Take the baking sheet out of the oven, and let your matzah cool.

Your matzah should look like this!

Be sure to involve your children in the process. They can help mix the dough, roll the dough flat and pierce each flattened dough circle with a fork.

It’s fun to try to finish the matzah in 18 minutes, but it takes a lot of practice! Right before you start mixing the dough with water, you can set your timer, and when it buzzes, see where you are in the process - just for fun! When we set the timer, it buzzed while we were still rolling our 5th piece of dough!

When you’re ready to eat your matzah, you can say a blessing if you’d like. In Judaism, there are blessings you can say for almost every moment: for seeing a budding tree for the first time this spring, for smelling spices on a Saturday night and for eating food - like homemade delicious matzah!

Ba-Ruch A-tah A-do-noi, Elo-hai-nu Me-lech Ha-o-lam, Ha-motzi lechem min haaretz.

Passover comes during the Hebrew month of Nisan and the season of spring, which is celebrated during our Passover seder as a time of optimism and hope. We think this is a beautiful message right now to share with our family.

For more ways to celebrate the season, visit our Passover Round-up for an imaginative way to "grow” parsley for your Passover seder, to make a matzah necklace, to make your own DIY afikomen bag, to make a tiny Baby Moses mini diorama - and more! If you bake your own matzah this year, let us know in the comments below!

B’tayavon (Enjoy), and Happy Passover. ♥

~ Jennifer