Okay, the threads on the little girl with Celiac Disease have gotten me thinking.

What, exactly, constitutes unleavened bread? I found this site that had a recipe (scroll down):

http://www.haydid.org/unleaven.htm

and with the biblical descriptions about leaving in haste and so forth, along with modern issues about exactly 18 minutes to the beginning of fermentation, and how hot to bake the matzah (600-800 degrees). It is quite interesting, but in a way, it just doesn't make sense. Did everyone back then make bread at the same exact time each day? Of course not--when they left, some doughs would have risen more, some less, depending upon when they started the process and the day's conditions (warmer, cooler, wetter, dryer, etc.) Not to mention that there are more modern ways today of keeping flour "dry", as the recipe calls for it to be.

Any comments?

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 25, 2004

Answers

Leaven is yeast. Unleavened bread is bread that did not have yeast added to the dough, so it doesn't rise before or during baking. Like pita bread. The point of using it for Passover was that they were to eat hurriedly, as though they were on the move - with their sandals on their feet and their staffs in their hands. If you are on the move you can't sit around waiting for dough to rise. You mix it, bake it, eat it, and continue on your way.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), August 25, 2004.

Right, but what was it mixed with? Just flour and water? Probably not, it was more likely flour, water, and "starter", i.e. sourdough, from the previous day's baking, which is wild yeast plus lactobacillus. Salt a little bit later if desired. And they left it to rise, or in this case, did not leave it long, but there were already yeasts fermenting in the dough from the starter.....commercial yeast was developed primarily to give some predictability to breadbaking.

What intrigued me about the site is how they mention the magic "18 minutes". That is dependent upon many variables, and only in a highly temperature-controlled environment could you even attempt do that. Bread was baked in the home environment--yes, of course there were bakeries, but only for people who could afford to buy their bread instead of bake it themselves. Yeast was everywhere.

How did they actually bake bread in the old days? And BTW, in my book "Pita the Great" by Virginia Habeeb (yes, that IS the title), it even calls for commercial yeast in the recipes. Although pitas, unlike other breads. are shaped and rolled before being left to rise.

I did find one recipe online for an Unleavened Pita, which was flour, oil, water and salt and it was essentially cooked like you would a pancake, not baked in any kind of an oven.

It sounds as if in the OT they were probably baking "as usual" when they got the word to leave, NOT necessarily baking unleavened bread from the start, and if they used the sourdough type starters, well, there was some fermentation going on....

That's why the whole "rules and regulations" process is confusing. I can see mixing your dough and baking without letting it sit (you waste the food otherwise), but this issue of "dry flour, spring water only, 18 minutes,", etc. is very very far removed from that day, as is the Communion wafer of today--no one would mistake it for bread of any sort. I did see on "Reading Rainbow" or one of the PBS kids' shows where a Native American woman cooked something out of corn called "fiki" (sp?), and it looked like a cornmeal slurry rubbed on a hot (over a fire) rock with the fingers, then gently lifted off the rock and rolled up. Very thin, like paper, and you could almost see through it.

I am not an expert in sourdough by any means, my DH has cheerfully eaten what I have dubbed to be sourdough bricks....lol.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 25, 2004.

I did spell it wrong, I was referring to Hopi Piki Bread.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), August 25, 2004.

The fuss is that her priest gave her a cracker and told her and her family that it was the Body of Christ. Such deception is sure to cause pain for those who were deceived, once the truth comes out. And the truth is bound to come out, for the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), August 25, 2004.