Matzo bakery gives children a taste of history

Passover may begin at sundown tonight, but a group of Roseville children got a jump-start on the Jewish holiday last week with a hands-on lesson on making matzo - the traditional cracker-like flatbread that's part flour, part water and a whole lot of haste.As part of a traveling education and outreach program, the Chabad-Lubavitch Model Matzo Bakery brought its message of Jewish history to a group of around half a dozen children at Chabad of Roseville."We do it to kind of prepare them for Passover," said the model bakery's Isaiah Leiberman. "It's a more exciting way to show them and help them understand it better."Chabad groups from all over travel the world in the weeks leading up to Passover each year to instruct thousands of children on the food's importance to the Jewish tradition.Because of its ties to the Jews' exodus from Egypt, matzo is the "official" food of the eight-day observance, Chabad of Roseville's Rabbi Yossi Korik said."Pharaoh came to Moses and said, 'OK, go,'" Korik explained. "But the Jews didn't have time to get all their things together. They just took dough and put it on their shoulders and the sun baked it."The resulting bread, which didn't have time to rise, became known as matzo - literally, "unleavened bread."Today, the bread is a key part of any Passover Seder - the feast commemorating the Exodus.To be kosher for Passover, matzo must be cooked within 18 minutes of mixing the only two ingredients allowed during the observance: flour and water. Any longer, and it's no longer matzo.After showing a brief video on matzo history, Moshe Langer of the model bakery passed out baker's hats and instructed the kids to start mixing up ingredients.Children worked furiously against the 18-minute time limit to combine water and flour, roll out the dough as thin as possible, and poke hundreds of holes using forks to ensure the bread has no chance of rising."Quickly," Langer told the group. "We have just a few minutes to go." Once ready, the dough takes just a few seconds to cook into the round, brittle food."I think its pretty amazing," said Ethan Guttman, 8. "I liked rolling it and making it a lot - especially the fork stuff."Guttman, who admits most of his schoolmates probably don't know what matzo is, described the taste as that of "a big cracker.""I like it with jelly," he said."When you're a kid and you only have matzo, you have to be creative," said Darrin Guttman, Ethan's dad. "We'd make matzah sandwiches, eat it with butter and jelly."The round, golden brown crackers of the Chabad Model Matzo Bakery are in contrast to the square crackers available at supermarkets, which are machine made.And though commercially available matzo has seen a proliferation of varieties in recent years - Manischewitz alone produces apple-cinnamon, garlic and even grape-flavored versions - to be kosher for Passover means limiting ingredients to just flour and water."It's plain," Lieberman said. "It's something where if you were in the desert it would save you."