MATZAIII MAN

Think you did a lot to get ready for the holiday?

Imagine making more than 1 million matzah

products for Pesach ...

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

AppleTree Editor

I

t would be better, all things considered, if
some Pesach foods never saw the light or
day: Passover instant oatmeal mix, for
example, or Pesach donuts or challah.
Passover lasagna noodles sound creepier than
Night of the Living Death maybe even worse than
learning that your child is an Ozzy Osbourne
wannabe.
Yet each year some manufacturers insist on corn-
ing up with the most unusual — and invariably
pricey — holiday foods.
Rest assured, Alan Adler isn't interested in mak-
ing Passover tostada mix.
Adler is director of operations at Aron Streit
Inc., the New York-based, family-established and
family-owned company famous for its Jewish
foods. He shakes his head at the very idea of any-
thing too offbeat when it comes to Pesach fare.
"We're not going to be having any kosher-for-
Passover bread mix at Streit's," he says. "We tend
to stick to the more traditional."
This year, like everyone else, Streit's was busy
getting ready for Pesach.
The first step: "We get all the non-kosher-for-
Passover ingredients (such as shortening and malt)
out of the factory," Adler says. "Then we close for
a week and take everything apart."
The machines, the conveyor belts and other
equipment are thoroughly cleaned — before they
are cleaned again. 'After we are done, a team of
rabbis comes through with steam machines to fur-
ther kosher the equipment (make it kosher for
Passover)," Adler says.
When all that cleaning is finally done and every-
thing put back in order, the flour made its grand
appearance. Streit's uses only a special Pesach flour
that, from its first days of existence, has been care-
fully supervised by rabbinic authorities. The flour
bags arrive in sealed trucks, that are once again
checked by rabbis before they even enter the
Streit's building.

The Human Touch

Though Streit's sells more than one million matzoh
products annually, the firm's process includes the

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2003

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human 'touch from start to finish.
"The flour and water [for the
matzah] are mixed by human beings,
not by a machine," Adler says. "The men
do all the mixing in very large bowls.
"The dough is then manually taken out of the
mixing bowls and fed down a chute, which goes to
the matzah-forming machine, where rollers flatten
it.
The flat dough continues its journey to a large
oven — Adler estimates it is about 75 feet long —
and then, voila, a piece of matzah .is born.
Now all it has to do is cool off and be placed
into a box (by human hands, Adler notes), which
is then sealed and ready to go.
According to Halachah (Jewish law), matzah
must be completed in less than 18 minutes, to
guarantee that the dough will not rise. So as the
matzah is being made, rabbis are there, watching
every step along the way. (Which might explain
some of the higher costs of certain Pesach items,
though Adler says Streit's matzah costs the same
year round, and New York law does prevent price-
gauging at the holidays.)
Matzah is, of course, the most popular Pesach
food, but not far behind are matzah meal, matzah
cake meal and matzah farfel. Adler shudders at the
idea that any of these might be made from leftover
matzah crumbs or broken bits that didn't warrant
inclusion in a box.
Streit's makes matzah meal, cake meal and farfel
as separate products, cooked a bit less than regular
matzah because homemakers likely will use them
in food that will itself require cooking.
Adler says that some of the most popular Streit's
products outside the realm of plain matzah are
matzah-ball soup mix and potato-pancake mix,
both of which are kosher for Passover, along with
macaroons (big sellers at the holiday, "but not
enough consumer demand" to make them year
round) and egg matzah.

Creating New Products

Long before Passover begins, employees of Streit's
sit with rabbis to come up with new products. Last
year, these included certain condiments and an
olive spread.
This year, however, Streit's faced the death of its

longtime mashgiach (kosher supervisor) and well-
known scholar, Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik. Rabbi
Soloveichik's son will continue as a mashgiach (the
company also added supervision from Kof-K), but
the passing of Rabbi Soloveichik left Streit's little
time for, or interest in, product development. So
this year, they stuck to the basics.
For Alan.Adler, Streit's isn't a job — it's a family
affair.
Adler is the great-grandson of the company's
founder, Aron Streit, who started the business as a
small New York bakery. Among his first products
were Moonstrips, a tasty matzah treat flavored
with poppy seeds and onion and which Streit's still
makes, recipe unchanged, to this day.
Even the factory reflects the company's logo:
"The taste of a memory."
Adler describes the Streit's building as not at all
unlike it was in the old days: "We have movies
[showing the business] from the 1930s, and you
can clearly see the resemblance."
Until' months ago, in fact, Streit's still used some
of the same equipment from the founder's days.
"Actually, the new machine doesn't work quite as
well as the very old one we used to use to wrap the
Passover matzah," Adler says.
Though tradition clearly flavors everything at,
the company, Streit's is not without its modern
touch.
Streit's is about to introduce a new line of ready-
to-serve soups, which Adler testifies are "absolutely
delicious."
Another new item: Mediterranean matzah —
not kosher-for-Passover but, Adler says, it's
yummy. The Mediterranean version features olive
oil, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic and basil. Adler says
this creation takes matzah out of this world and
into a completely different galaxy.
"Taste this stuff, " he asserts, "and you'll never
ask again, 'How much could anyone possibly do
with matzah?'"

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