From Wheat to Matzah Rabbi Elli Cohn, CJHS 2009

From Wheat to Wonder: How Matzah and Bread Go Hand in Hand

Rabbi Elli Cohn, CJHS 2009

Even amateur bakers know one fundamental truth: sheer magic happens in the kitchen. One need bake challah only once to experience the wonder of witnessing the braided loaves double in size with the help of yeast, flour, water, time, and heat. While the fundamental elements needed to bake bread are themselves found in nature, they cannot be used as baking ingredients directly from the earth.

Take wheat as an example. It grows perfectly in nature, but it must be destroyed (i.e. ground into flour), before it can be used to make the edible, nourishing, and delicious bread we all know well. We do not eat stalks of grain fresh from the field. Rather, the golden sheaves must go through a lengthy process of being harvested, dried, and ground into flour before we can imagine them transformed into raisin-studded, plaited loaves.

It may not feel as resonant for us today in the US, but for much of history bread was the cornerstone of every meal in many cultures throughout the world. It was, in some societies, even the utensil used to transport other foods from a dish into one’s mouth. A meal was defined by the presence or absence of bread.

This is reflected in the fact that we are only required to recite the full Birkat Hamazon prayer after we’ve eaten a meal with bread. Until commercial dried yeast was available (amazingly only about 150 years ago!), the only way to make bread rise was with a sourdough starter. In fact, the process of leavening bread with a sourdough culture can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians, putting the use of fermentation to make food on the timeline of history several generations before our patriarch Abraham is said to have lived. We’re talking a long time ago.

The miraculousness of sourdough is in its simplicity: mix water and flour in a loosely covered jar on and off for about a week, and it will have transformed itself into a rising agent that will not only make bread rise, but will also give it a wonderfully tangy flavor.

We now know the science behind the pandemic-famous sourdough starter. When flour and water are mixed together, wild yeasts and bacteria from the air and from the flour itself start to eat the sugars in the flour. Eventually, if fed with more flour and water, the yeasts and lactic acid bacteria will increase, producing enough carbon dioxide to make a loaf of bread rise. This bubbly mixture contains more complexity than meets the eye. Don’t underestimate the power of this unaesthetic gloop! It is a living, breathing thing!

There was a time, however, when humanity lacked the language to talk about science in this way. The same fundamental baking methods were used, but different explanations and attributions were developed to help make sense of such inexplicable miraculousness. Even I, an inheritor of scientific language, am bewildered every single time my starter bubbles, rises, smells perfectly sour, and manages to make my bread rise. In these moments, I can’t help but think how natural it is to attribute this phenomenon to a higher power.