The Bread of my Affliction...

I’m apologizing, again, for the lack of a Roundup post this week. I’m still dealing with my back issue, and sitting comfortably enough to write has been hard. I am on the mend, though, and will be back on the regular post schedule next week. But for now, I’m opening access to this post to all subs, free and paid, you’re welcome, but don’t get used to it. My lovely free subscribers, after this one it’s back to just the video-less 1x/week roundup post for you. So if you’re super sad about that, here’s your chance to upgrade to a paid subscription. Writing is work, and work should be paid, right? Would you do your job for free? I don’t think so. 😉

First of all, I’m well aware that we’re still like six weeks away from Passover. Normally I’d do a post like this a week or two before the holiday, but I had to shoot this specific video this week (with a slightly different edit) for the social media feed of the new Catskills Borscht Belt Museum. I was asked to contribute a Passover-themed video recipe for their feed, and I was happy to oblige. I love the idea of the museum, to archive and celebrate the cultural and historical phenomena that was the golden age of the Borscht Belt. If you’re not familiar with the term or the place, this is a region of New York’s Catskill mountains, where, from the early 1900’s through the ‘70’s many, many hotels and bungalow colonies opened and hosted generations of Jews from the Northeast. Many resorts at the time didn’t allow jews, so we just opened our own. My own summer house in Tiny Bungalow land is a fragment of that history, although it’s further south, and was founded by communist furriers who were opposed to having children. So…technically it’s from the same era and culture, but they were definitely creating a different outlying reality than say Kutshers or the Nevele or Grossinger’s which were all about upward mobility and establishing oneself firmly into the mainstream, American middle class. And making marriages.

If you watched Mrs. Maisel, you got a glimpse of it, when the family decamps to the Catskills for the summer. Or Kellerman’s Hotel, in Dirty Dancing. My own family were regulars at Swan Lake, but unfortunately that all ended by the time I was a toddler, so my only actual memory of being there is of being sick and having to stay in bed while my cousins all played in the pool. But I was given a teeny-tiny Corning Ware toy coffee set by someone, which I delighted in playing with in my bed and wish I still had today.

My father, and my husband’s father and thousands of young jewish people worked up there in the summers, as waiters and bellboys, pool attendants…It was a great place to make some cash for college, meet a potential spouse, and make future work connections. But, it all started to crumble in the 70’s though, as immigrant jews and their first and second generation born families moved upwards and out of the cities to green, leafy suburbs and didn’t need the escape to the mountains every summer anymore. And once assimilated and climbing upwards financially, they were able to afford to fly to more exciting locations than Lake Kiamesha or Monticello or Ellenville, New York.

But back to the video. I rallied my sad body this week and we shot this matzo video for the museum, and for you all!! Because what’s the most important Passover food? No, it’s not gefilte fish, it’s matzo! And I make a pretty awesome matzo, I must say. Last year we did some matzo making with another famous jew, Melissa Gilbert. And that was fun, but here we are again, halfway through March and with spring creeping right up on us so it’s time to think spring holidays!!

The key to successful matzo making is to roll the dough as thin as possible, which means fighting the battle of the gluten matrix. The gluten matrix is what is formed in bread doughs when you knead them. The proteins (gluten) get all knotted up and enmeshed, much like the jangled nerves in my lower back and leg, and the only way to tame the gluten, and the sciatic nerve, is to let them rest, then manually force them into submission. Gluten relaxes right out if you leave dough alone for a while, it’s inherently lazy, I like to say. Sciatic nerve, a little less so. But letting the dough rest will allow the gluten to relax enough that you can roll it paper-thin. HOWEVER.

However, if you are making matzo that is strictly following the rules of Passover, the rules say (and boy, does my tribe have a LOT of rules. Most of which I completely disregard) that the entire process, from measuring, mixing, resting, rolling and baking cannot take more than eighteen minutes. Because apparently, the ancient rabbis and Talmudic scholars were also molecular biologists, and used their tenth-century electron microscopes to determine that after eighteen minutes flour mixed with water will start to ferment, due to wild yeasts in the flour and the air and therefore become leavened. I’m pretty sure it takes longer than that, considering that a sourdough starter takes about 24 hours to start bubbling and a blob of dough after 18 minutes shows no visible signs of fermentation, but who am I to argue with the great Rabbis? Jews also have a thing about the number eighteen. It’s a numerology thing, it means good luck and a bunch of other things I can’t remember, but when it comes to matzo making, that’s the rule. Do I follow this rule? Uh, no. Should you? Up to you.

Nonetheless, these matzos are actually delicious, which nobody has ever said at any time in our 6000 year history, until now. So I recommend you make them! And you don’t have to be jewish, you can make them just as crackers. I got the recipe many years ago from Baking With Julia (Child) and she’s the least jewish person ever! She suggested serving them with cocktails! As if! Strictly with red wine, horseradish, gefilte and haroset. We can’t throw ALL tradition out the window. Cocktails. Omg…so goyishe.

Here’s the recipe, with huge credit given to Lauren Groveman, who taught Julia to make them and gave her recipe for the book, which opens right to the page I’ve been using for the past twenty-five years. There are crumbs from each year’s matzo embedded in the page. A reminder of the passing of time.

Julia’s Goyishe Matzo

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sesame seeds or EBBS (everything bagel seasoning)

Black pepper

2 tsp Kosher salt

1 1/2 cups warm water (105-115 degrees F)

Kosher salt for sprinkling

1. Preheat the oven to 550 degrees F (or as high as it will go) with a pizza stone or metal baking sheet on the lowest rack (remove all of the other racks). 

2. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, seeds, and pepper. 

3. Dissolve the salt in the water and pour it over the flour mixture. 

4. Knead it for about 3 minutes, until it is smooth.

5. Divide the dough into 24 equal pieces (or 12 if you want big crackers) and cover with plastic wrap.

6. Roll each one as thinly as possible, flouring your work surface and your rolling pin. Sprinkle the top with Kosher salt. Prick the dough all over with a fork (I rolled mine out one at a time, and baked each rolled out piece immediately, leaving the other pieces of dough in balls). 

7. One at a time, place the rolled out dough onto the stone, and quickly shut the door. Bake for one minute on one side, flip it with tongs, and cook for another minutes. Flip again if necessary, and cook for another minute. Cool on a rack. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Due to the opening and closing of the oven, you may find that you might have to bake the later ones a little longer.