You’d think more people would make their own matzoh instead of buying it in a box—the recipe couldn’t be simpler, and come on, it’s the star of the Passover story. I use our homemade matzoh instead of crackers all the time for snacks and hors d’oeuvres. How many pieces of matzoh you get from this recipe will depend on how practiced you are at rolling and trimming the dough.–Noah and Rae Bernamoff
LC Matzoh-Palooza Note
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Special Equipment: Pasta Machine (optional)
Homemade Matzoh Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
- 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 3/4 cup plus up to 1/4 cup warm water
Directions
- 1. Preheat the oven to 500°F (260°C) and place a pizza stone (ideally) or a 10-by-15-inch baking sheet (realistically) on the bottom oven rack.
- 2. In a large bowl, mix together all of the ingredients, using 3/4 cup water, until they come together to form a dough. If the dough seems dry, add more water, a touch at a time. If you do not need the matzoh to be kosher for Passover, let the dough rest for 10 to 15 minutes. If you do need the matzoh to be kosher for Passover, proceed immediately to the next step.
- 3. Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Flatten a piece slightly and pass it repeatedly through a pasta maker, reducing the thickness each time until you reach the minimum setting. Alternately, you can simply roll the dough as thinly as possible with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface. Repeat with the remaining dough pieces.
- 4. Trim the rolled-out dough pieces into rectangles. Use a fork to prick holes in the surface of the dough. lf salted matzoh are desired, brush or spray the dough surface lightly with water and sprinkle with salt to taste.
- 5. Carefully place some of the pieces of dough onto the pizza stone or baking sheet. They should fit snugly. Bake until the surface of the matzoh is golden brown and bubbly, 30 to 90 seconds. Using tongs, carefully flip the matzoh pieces and continue to bake until the other side is golden browned and lightly blistered, 15 to 30 seconds. Just let the matzoh get a few dots of light brown; do not let the matzoh turn completely brown as it will taste burnt. Keep careful, constant watch to keep the matzoh from burning; the exact baking time will vary from oven to oven and will get longer with subsequent batches.
Hungry for more? Chow down on these:
- Sweet Lokshen Kugel from The Shiksa in the Kitchen
- Jewish Rye Bread from Brown Eyed Baker
- Challah from Leite's Culinaria
- Rugelach from Leite's Culinaria
Homemade Matzoh Recipe © 2012 Noah and Rae Bernamoff. Photo © 2012 Quentin Bacon. All rights reserved.
[Oroz Sokoh] Making the matzoh crackers left me with the same sense of wonder I had the first time I made pasta. The dough was a snap to put together with only 4 ingredients. I rolled it out by hand and the resulting crackers reminded me of cream crackers, creamy and complete with golden blisters. They were devoured within minutes of exiting the oven, gladly embraced by peanut butter and Nutella!
[Eydie Desser] Although it was difficult to get the dough to the right consistency for rolling out, once I did, the results were wonderful. The homemade matzoh isn’t only fun to make, it tastes just like store-bought, but fresher. And it’s more authentic looking. My dough was way too dry with 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon of water. l kept adding water (approximately another 1/4 to 1/2 cup) until the dough came together. It didn’t feel right, so I made another batch, thinking I added too much flour to the first batch. Same thing happened. So I went back to the first batch (about 10 to 15 minutes later), and voila, the dough felt perfect for rolling out. I divided the dough into 2-ounce pieces and rolled them out in the pasta maker. This amount is easy to handle, and makes for a good-size piece of matzoh. I baked it on a hot pizza stone and it took 1 1/2 minutes on the first side and a quick 15 seconds on the second side at 500. Be sure not to let the matzoh get golden brown, as it starts to taste burnt. Just let the matzoh get a few dots of light brown and you’re good to go. Think of the possibilities: flavoring the dough with different spices, cutting it into fun shapes, etc. I can’t wait for Passover!
Ellen Fuss] Simple ingredients and some mixing and rolling and I made delicious homemade matzoh. Well, maybe more like delicious homemade crackers. Mixing is easy, but rolling and trimming take some time. A quick bake in the oven resulted in a delicious cracker that somewhat resembled matzoh. I used my pasta machine to roll the dough and felt that it was best at the second-to-last setting on the roller. Using my pasta maker resulted in sheets of dough that were about 36 inches by 5 inches when rolled at the thinnest setting. (And then there were 7 more to go.) Frankly there was so much dough I actually threw out the last ball because I was tired of making them. I was able to make my fork marks, cut the dough into rectangles, and transfer the sheets easily to a preheated baking sheet. I imagine that rolling by hand would yield a very different product. Using the pasta machine makes them fun to make and a consistent thickness. I could imagine these with butter, cheeses, tuna salad, or as a nice addition to a bread basket. I might even consider using them for Passover. I think that next time I’d salt some of them. My preference was for the ones that I made a bit on the thicker side.Watch the oven carefully as the brown blisters turn to burnt in minutes.
[Sue Epstein] I must admit that I don’t care much for matzoh, but with Passover not too far off, I thought it’d be fun to make this with my grandkids. I don’t have a pasta maker and rolled the dough out with a rolling pin. We rolled the dough out onto a lightly floured board and had to add a little more flour a time or two. The timing of 30 seconds was right on but I’m sure it depends on your oven. Be careful though and watch closely; they burn quickly. Being that my “assistants” were rolling them out, the shapes weren’t exactly consistent but they were approximately 4 X 4 INCHES?in size. The taste wasn’t marvelous, but then matzoh is a pretty bland cracker. But they were pretty good for matzohs and a wonderful thing to do with kids!
Probably not kosher for Passover, unless you have a rabbi come and certify your kitchen(!), but a fun challenge nevertheless.
We’ll be waiting to hear what you think after you make them, Lydia….
Lydia, a Rabbi is not needed. One needs only go through the process of ensuring all items purchased to make this are kosher, and of course, kashering the kitchen and oven prior to Pesach. That said, it is sure easier just to buy them pre-made for Passover instead of scrubbing down the whole kitchen.
Many thanks for the explanation, Grace.
You also have to make sure you cook them within a specific amount of time. Even without leavening, if the dough rests too long, it will leaven on it’s own. I watched kosher matzoh being made in a factory on TV and one of the duties of the rabbi was to time it so that the dough was in the oven within a specific amount of time.
Correct. We had included mention of the 18-minute rule for that very reason….
These look gorgeous and sound yummy. But I don’t think they’d be kosher-for-Passover—traditionally matzoh is made without resting the dough at all because only 18 minutes is allowed to elapse from the time the flour mixes with the water, otherwise it is considered chametz and not suitable for eating during Passover.
Many thanks, Robin. We are aware of the 18-minute rule, it seems we just roll our crackers more quickly than most! I believe you could make these without letting the dough rest for 10 minutes, which ought to allow ample time to roll out the crackers and get them into the oven, and the matzohs would still be fine, albeit perhaps slightly denser than usual. We’d love if you let us know what you think when you make them.
Ah. 18 min. I knew there was a time limit. That said, if you’re fast at rolling and baking, some of them will be done within the 18 min. time limit.
Yes, and practice makes perfect—or rather, even faster!
I want to make this today but have one important question – I sift the flour before or after measuring? It reads as it is 4 1/2 cups of sifted flour (sifting into the measuring cup) but want to make sure. Thank you!
Hi Jamie, I apologize. We asked some of our testers your question, but I understand that you’ve already made the matzoh. So, what did you do? How did it turn out? Fill us in, please!
I’ll see how fast we can go… working with 2 and 4 year-old sous chefs here!
Sounds like fun, Robin. I love it when my children are in the kitchen with me, mess and all!
The matzo was a big hit! Delicious and pretty easy, and it came out fine without resting the dough. The use of the pasta maker is a genius technique for light and super-thin matzo. However, we didn’t even come close to hitting the 18-minute goal. The recipe made so much dough that even if I had been able to get it all rolled out and docked before the timer went off, there’s no way I could have fit it all in my oven at once! Working as fast as I could (which admittedly was slower than an adult working alone, with my 2 munchkins assisting me), we got through about 1/3 of the dough, which was enough to fill the pizza stone plus one baking sheet, by the 18 minute mark. Thankfully we did this as a pre-passover project so it didn’t matter that some of our finished product was not officially kosher for Passover. I think next year I’ll just make the recipe 1/3 at a time.
Lovely to hear, Robin! And yes, this does make a rather big batch, although we’ve found that with practice we’ve gotten quite a lot faster at rolling the dough. Love that you had munchkin helpers, makes the experience all the more memorable….
Hi, most flour on the market is tempered with water and so the matzo you make at home can’t be kosher for passover even if it’s mixed and baked in under eighteen minutes. there are fifty one other weeks in the year, however, to eat homebaked matzo
ja, making matzo is pretty easy but making it so that it is kosher for Passover is somewhat more complicated for a variety of reasons. Non-Passover matzo can be made from regular flour. The matzo that is used for Passover is made from “Watched Flour” (“Shmurah” in Hebrew), so if it’s important to have kosher for Passover matzo, purchase it rather than home-baking it. This recipe is delicious however for the remainder of the year (from someone who doesn’t care much for matzo) and a really fun project to do with kids.
Hi Sue, thanks for the insight. I have to admit, my favorite way to eat matzo is covered in caramel and chocolate.