At New Jersey's only matzoh bakery, timing is everything

Matzoh is The Bread of Haste. And at Lakewood Shmurah Matzoh — New Jersey's only commercial matzoh bakery — they've got haste down to a science.

Especially now, with Pesach just around the corner. (This year, Passover begins the evening of Monday, April 22 and ends the evening of Tuesday, April 30).

Hustle? Bustle? Such words don't begin to describe the activity on the crowded bakery floor.

Dollops of dough, one after the other, are pounded by manic young men, hopping up and down as they whack whack whack the mixture with stainless steel pins — only to pass it on to others who slice it into discs, who send it in turn to others who roll it into thin pancakes, who then punt it to others who perforate it (so that no air pockets will form). Finally, the raw matzoh rounds are draped over long steel poles, conveyed to the next room, and baked, 10 at a time, in blazing wood-fired ovens for no more than 20 seconds.

All the while, the bakers are laughing and yelling. Steel poles are dropping with a clang! only to be taken up again with another clang! The little window that separates the room with the wheat flour from the room with the water —  they have to be kept in separate compartments — is constantly banging open and shut.

A joyful noise

It's a noisy, exuberant, unending ballet. But it's also carefully choreographed.

"This is what we do every day," said Chatzkel Kelaty, one of the energetic young men who are bouncing, like kids in a mosh pit, as they beat the dough with a pounder.

"It's pretty hard, but you get better at it," he said.

During the Passover season, he's one of 40 workers manning three shifts (in less hectic times, 25 workers labor in two shifts). Right now, the bakers are working 10 or 11 hours a day.

It all requires stamina — which Kelaty has in spades. "We're positive people, we have positive energy," he said.

They need it. Time is of the essence.

Eighteen minutes. That, according to Jewish tradition, is the difference between leavened and unleavened bread — the "bread made without yeast" the Hebrew slaves were commanded to eat in the terrible night before their quick departure, in Exodus 12. "Eat in haste; it is the Lord's Passover." Any longer preparation time and the bread is, for religious purposes, spoiled.

"From the time when the water and flour is mixed, a countdown clock is activated, and the 18 minutes begins," said Henry Davidowitz, founder and CEO.

Minutes to spare

Actually, he says, they've got the process down to four minutes. But after each 18-minute period, all the work surfaces are cleaned, and the paper on them changed.

"It's an incredibly labor-intense process," said Davidowitz, whose company, to his knowledge, is the only commercial matzoh maker in New Jersey, and one of only a dozen in the tri-state area.

"It's a difficult business, and there aren't very many of us," Davidowitz said. "The ones there are have to produce as much matzoh as we can."

This matzoh, unlike the mass-produced variety, is hand — not machine — made. It looks different. Round instead of square, richly browned on the top, thin as a potato chip. And it tastes different.

"Have you done a taste test?" asked Yakov Davidowitz, Israel's son, and the company's assistant manager. "You have to!"

So we did.

Are you one of the cynics, who've always thought of matzoh as one step up from shirt cardboard? You've never tasted matzoh like this.

It's got a crispy texture and a toasty, fresh-from-the oven flavor that you won't get from Manischewitz and Streit's. Not that Davidowitz Sr. is knocking the competition.

"They taste good, and they go good with egg salad and chopped liver," Davidowitz said. "Our matzohs do also. It's just kind of an expensive product, just to put egg salad on it. You're not going to use it frivolously."

Getting what you pay for

A one-pound box of Lakewood Shmurah wheat matzoh is $39. That price reflects the cost of the hand-labor, the bespoke stainless steel work tables, the two custom-designed ovens that reach 1,000 degrees — much hotter than your conventional pizza oven.

"Everything is custom-made, from our ovens to the tabletops," Davidowitz said. "It's a tremendous investment to start off with. Nothing is mechanized. Everything that has been made for our production is a custom-made item."

This matzoh is created pretty much as it was in the time of Moses. Making it is an act of devotion. And that makes it dear to customers. A living link to the Exodus.

Sometimes, parents bring their children in, and everyone participates in the matzoh-making as a family activity. School groups come in, from as far away as Baltimore, Chicago, or even Los Angeles, to see the matzohs quick-fired in the orange flames.

"When we're eating it for Passover, you'll see groups coming in to purchase it, and there's more of an intensity to it," said Davidowitz Sr., who also goes by the name of Israel.

Father to son

Davidowitz got interested in baking from his father, a bread baker from Czechoslovakia. In the 1990s, he discovered a market, in Ocean County, for a product that many families were used to traveling to New York for. The business, now 30 years old, has grown as the Jewish community in Lakewood has grown.

"My father was a European-trained bread baker," Davidowitz said. "We had experience at home, myself and my brothers, working in a bakery, so we were not put off so much with this idea of producing a bread, a matzoh. And I guess I was always interested in doing it. Then came this opportunity."

Wheat and whole wheat matzoh, gluten-free oat matzoh, organic spelt matzoh, and several other varieties are available for on-site purchase at the factory, tucked away in a Lakewood office park (you can also purchase Lakewood matzoh at some ShopRite and other retail stores, and online).

What you won't find is egg matzoh. Or garlic matzoh. Or "everything" matzoh.

This product, while perfectly good for snacking, was not made primarily with that in mind. Matzoh is Biblical. Divinely ordained. Davidowitz takes it seriously. Just flour and water. Nothing else.

"Passover has a lot of stringencies," Davidowitz said. "People are very, very careful with it."

Keeping an eye out

Davidowitz is more careful than most.

"Shmurah" means "watched." And this matzoh is watched every step of the way — not just in the factory, but long before the ingredients ever get here.

"The question is, when do you need to watch it from?" Davidowitz said. "Do you need to watch it at the time it's harvested, or the time the flour is milled, or do you need to watch it from the time the baking actually starts? Those are the three options. In our hand-matzoh production, we are going for the most stringent option: watching it from the time it's being harvested."

That means contracting with farmers, sending out supervisors to monitor the harvesting, making sure that the combines, silos, and dump trucks are regularly cleaned.

It's not the way everyone makes matzoh. But for Davidowitz — and for his customers — it's the only way.

"We have contracts with farmers we've used in the past," he said. "Sometimes we get a new farmer. But he has to be able to accommodate our needs. Not every farmer is interested. We do pay a premium for the service. But we still need a farmer who is going to put up with us in that respect."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Lakewood Matzoh bakery: What makes matzoh different on Passover