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I'm interested in applying principles of dough magic to Passover cooking and I have sort of a general understanding of how developing the gluten structure works when kneading a traditional wheat flour dough.

My question is whether there is any further development of the gluten structure possible when the "flour" is matzoh meal, which is basically flour that has been combined with water, baked quickly, and then ground back into flour. I assume there's a reason that there's no family recipe for "matzoh bread" but I don't know if that's religious (bc we're supposed to eat matzoh instead of bread and all the restrictions on yeast and all) or culinary (bc making bread-like food from matzoh meal just doesn't work).

Will a gluten structure develop at all within the matzoh meal dough? What's the chemistry of how matzoh meal doughs and batters stick together?

beth
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2 Answers2

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Matzah meal has already been cooked and so therefore is no longer flour and cannot possibly "rise" or become leavened. That is why any passover cakes you will make need to have egg whites separated - that is what created the leavened texture. Think of matzah meal like bread crumbs, whatever you could use breadcrumbs for, you can use matzah meal for and vice versa. Whatever you could NOT use breadcrumbs for (baking bread for instance) you could not use matzah meal for.

Selena T
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Cooked wheat flour hardly develops any gluten structure anymore. This is intentionally used in many culinary techniques where you want to limit or inhibit gluten development: roux, certain flatbreads, certain pie crusts... An experiment you can do is kneading up two simple doughs, one with room temperature water one with boiling water - then separating starch and gluten by washing out the dough. The amount of gluten you can salvage from the boiling water dough will be drastically lower....

rackandboneman
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