Inside Streit's Machine Matzah Bakery Full Video

[Music] we are here today at the strites machine matzah factory in orangeburg new york with rabbi daniel center of the cuff k why did we come out today we figured at aldaf we're learning will be fascinating to see how machine mata is made i believe the only machine matzah factory outside of israel or at least in the united states of america and rabbi center has been very involved in setting this plant up and all the supervision that goes on here recently welcome hashem it's my pleasure to be here and to have you here as our guest so we have a picture here in the background of ramosha feinstein and aaron sullivacik and others together with the original mister straight rubber center would you tell us give us a little bit of a historical background sure strikes matzah started somewhere around 1925. back then there were a number of machine lots of bakeries in the united states strikes was one of the premier bakeries and once a year strikes would invite robonim to visit the facility my zeta ramoshan pelef was one of those are up on him they'd all come and they'd tour the factory at the end they'd actually have a big souda i don't know exactly what they were celebrating but they'd sit down and have a suit that would it was then i guess it was it was publicity they would print it up in the newspapers and um they were very proud of the setup back then many things have changed we've improved machinery has improved tremendously in the past hundred years or close to 100 years so that's actually a picture where they're standing in front of the machine and watching the matzah entering the oven at what point did the kafka get involved in my father was a automator of reviran salvation crevar and solovacic certified stripes for many many years after his patera they were looking for somebody to uh not replace or if moshe's olivetrick still certifies but to add to it so that was probably about 15 years ago that we were called in to assist and work with rubbish elevator that was in the lower east side on rivington street when they moved here rebel salvation came with us as well where salvation lives in chicago with coverty does not traveling as much we're doing a lot of the work for him we're in touch with him all the time but we worked together so again somewhere around 15 years so this is a collection of some of the old equipment that was used at rivington um some of the equipment there's actually some more inside some of these equipment actually date back to the 1930s and it's good to see the contrast of the old and what we have fortunate to work with today obviously we've gotten much more advanced in our equipment and we have a lot of things this was an old mixer we've got a radar here and a couple of the rollers scales which were not used for production but post-production mixing bowls and whatnot but as you'll see a lot of things have we've gotten a lot more advanced in the last hundred years ninety-nine percent of the matzo we produce the stripes we label as matsushutos that are non-shmura matzah and what that means is that we do not get shmura flower delivered to our bakery we do a very very small run of mata that's actually shmura flower the difference between shimura flower and regular flower is shmura flower is flower that was made from wheat that was shamur from the time of seerah that's called shmuramatsumi saskatsira that from the time the wheat was cut until the matzah is baked and into the oven there's a constant smearer this a jewish person involved a firm person involved with the handling of the wheat all the way through the baking of the matzah that's shmura mishat's katsira what we have is we have shmuramishastrina we get regular grain that was harvested not under supervision it's inspected carefully to make sure that we do not have any problems with sprouting and from the time the matzah arrives at the mill we have supervision not only do we have supervision but actually the mashikiyak presses the button to start the milling process so this way we have shmura mishas trina we don't label it that way but we recognize that there are many many people in america who will end up using our matzah at the pesach seder so because of that we want to make it shmura from as early a point as we can so it's practical to go back being that we have a mashiach who's checking and confirming that the flower is being milled with a proper ashkaja it's easy for us to add in that he's the one actually turning on the mill and he also has in mind that it's being done le shane matza smithson for the purpose of fulfilling our mitzvah of eating matzah on pesach here's where it all begins we're standing outside straits and they have to get the flower into the factory rabbi raj what happens over here so before we get to when the truck arrives in addition to the complex cautious program that we have here at streits the casters actually starts off first at the mills strikes is currently receiving their flower from several mills out in pennsylvania we have a masjid committee that is setting up and supervising each run a flower the grain is received primarily from local states delaware pennsylvania maryland the masjid meets the trailer and pulls samples of each load of wheat he takes it to his office he verifies that there's no sprouting so there's no concerns of comets it's then off loaded into dedicated bins for the strikes run within the mill itself conventional flower is produced the following way the grain is goes through a system where they're these are removing the stones any chaff it then goes through a system where they temper it with water in order for it to have a proper break the mash gear shuts off all the water that's introduced into the mill we then do a flush through the entire system and then the flower is produced and put into dedicated peso trailers strikes is receiving approximately four trailers a week of flower the trucks will back in over here the meshiach will meet the trailer the trailer is sealed with cuff case seals both on the hatches and on the food line after the mechanic verifies the seals and the paperwork is hooked up to the lines here where it goes into one of two dedicated conventional flower silos which then feed into the bakery for their specialty flowers such as the oats spells and organic that is received in super sex which will see the process once we get back into the facility okay we just came in from seeing where the flower gets brought into the plant the flower goes into these silos everybody scent do you want to tell us how long the flower sits in the silos for sure we're very fortunate because we get very frequent deliveries and our flour moves very quickly so even though we sift all of our flour our flour gets milled and sifted in pennsylvania and gets shipped to us and is used within a day or two these are our two main silos they're called our bulk silos and then we have our specialty silos in the other room for specialty flour like spelt and whole wheat but the matzah comes in here goes into these silos these silos are prepared they're also used during the year for non-cushula pesach and that can have tempered wheat in it so beforehand we actually take apart the whole machine somebody climbs in there and actually brushes out the entire silo and then we flush through thousands and thousands of pounds of flour to make sure that there's absolutely no residue and then we would afterwards refill it with flour our first productions for pesach are actually sold as humid stickamatsu so we do like a test run and a flush of flour all the way through the system the first few days of production is produced even it's kashala pesach in kosher la pesach mode we actually sell that as non-kosher la pesach and it's only afterwards when we've got the whole system working and working well and completely flushed out that we switch over to our pesach line so from here it goes from here one of these two silos they're generally using one or the other on a specific time it then goes through here pneumatically air pushes it and moves it through the factory it goes through one of three sifters when it goes through the sifter from there it gets cold based on demand when they need to fill a bowl with flour the operator pushes the button and the flour gets loaded into that particular bowl so we're coming up to the tanks that hold the main shilanu representative will tell us what mahm shalom is and also why they have these tarps hanging around the mountain tanks survey center okay so when we make matza pesach mata is just two ingredients flour and water but it's not simple flour and it's not even simple water the flour we're going to talk about separately but the water has to be mayam chalanu which people commonly make we need our own water but that's not to do with it miami london means water that rests if you think about hot springs in arizona we're worried we're always worried about adding heat to our to our matzah so if you have a mix and i'm using hot water i'm worried that the matzahs are going to become hummus faster so we want water that has no heat so the best way to do that is to draw the water out of the ground before shikia the day before and then it rests mayam shalanu that rested so what we do is we have separate tanks that we fill always before shkia and those tanks we have to make sure that we have enough water that will last us for that entire day's production once we miss skier we got to wait another 24 hours until we're able to use the water the reason why they're draped has nothing to do with the flower that's here because these are completely closed systems and there's no there's no fear that flowers gonna get into the uh tanks the problem is we do not mean we talked about sunlight we don't want any sunlight there's a skylight here and even though it's probably okay because it's opaque it's not a clear lens we were worried that we didn't want any sunlight to be reflected on our semi-transparent tanks but even if they weren't if they were stainless steel tanks you'd worry about them heating up so we put we draped to the area where the miami shelter was so there would be no sunlight directly hitting the miami shilano tanks so here are our two miami solano tanks we actually have a third back up in another room these tanks will last us approximately 24 hours so we can produce even though we generally don't but we theoretically could produce around the clock what they do is they start with one tank when we get almost to an hour approximately it'll take about an hour to fill these tanks an hour before skia we switch to our secondary tank and then we refill our primary tank unlike conventional water when we draw water in our house when you turn on the faucet of the water in your house water pressure pushes the water in the problem would be if we would use it like that we'd have water that was not mayam chalanu entering the tank because you water in to push water out so what we have to do once we finish filling the tanks we shut off the inlet so water can't come in and then we use a pump you sort of hear it in the background there's a pump over here that creates pressure so we can pump the water to our mixing room there's a sophisticated set of locks we don't just leave this the chance that it's done correctly rabbi right if you could explain how the locking system works and how the masjid takes care of controlling the filling of the water sure so as you can see here this is the feed line for the city water that comes into the plant the water goes through over here and then you have two lines one feeds tank number one and one's feeding tank number two as a control point as you can see we have a lock on each one so that the tanks cannot be filled out during the day the water travels down below right now we are using tank number one hence the lock is open and that's feeding it to the plant tank number two as an additional control point we have the lock on here and the water supply is unable to be released at approximately 3 30 today uh the meshiach will come and open up the locks and i'll be filling the tank that is not being used and i'll have it filled before uh skill okay ruby center where we heading now we're actually going into the actual matza bakery we're actually on two floors upstairs we're gonna go into the mixing room matzah starts in the mixing room as flour and water makes its way down as dough and then it's formed and goes to the sheeter from the sheeter it goes into the oven and then we're gonna eventually get to the other side of the factory where they pack the matzo let's go bake matzo let's go [Music] so we're here now in the mixing room where the dough is put together the flour comes in the water comes in it's mixed and rabbit center number rack will show us the process that's put in place to start this quick matzah production with matza unlike almost everything else that's kosher timing is critical and um we're watching the clock on a number of different things one of the things is as everyone knows you have 18 minutes to bake matzah so from the time the matzah meets water which happens inside one of our one of the mixers that entire batch will be completely baked and out of the oven within 18 minutes it starts as flour in a bowl here from there it's a clean bowl of course from there it goes into one of our mixers our mixer mixes for about three minutes this mixer is being cleaned as this mixer is working we use a mixer for 15 minutes and then we switch to the next mixer we'll use that for 15 minutes while we clean this mixer for 15 minutes once it's finished mixing for three minutes it comes here it gets dumped into this hopper from this hopper it's going to make its way downstairs where it's going to be sheeted and will eventually make its way into the oven a big part of the koshers here is of course what the mashiki can do rabbi right can you explain what the mosquitoes can do here so azerbaijan to mention the goal is to have the matzo exit the oven within 18 minutes the bowls are cleaned out in between each batch the bowls are then placed under the hopper where they're filled up with approximately 200 pounds of flour prior to filling up the bowls the mosquito will make sure that the bowls are cleaned once the flour is filled it's then put into a mixer each mixer has a clock which is set to 15 minutes each mixer is used for 15 minutes and then they alternate they start cleaning the mixer as we're having a mixer cleaned over here and then we move it back and forth throughout the uh throughout the day the bowls pulled off the masquitum are taking a piece of kala which is put into the basket over here then putting it onto the launcher and then put into the hopper it takes approximately seven minutes seven and a half minutes from the time the water hits the flour until the dough clears the hopper from the hopper until the oven it's approximately seven minutes as well one of the things that mosquito have to focus on is that when the bowl goes on the launcher the dough tends to build up over here and the dough tends to build up on the launcher every 15 minutes an alarm will go off and the mosquito are required to vacuum the launcher and wipe down the rim to make sure there's no buildup of dough additionally on the deck over here around the hopper there's always the concern of some dough falling down and getting stuck here as you can see they just went through the cycle it's extremely cleaned but again every 15 minutes they're using a vacuum to clean that out as well once the dough is dumped out of the bowl the bowl goes to the cleaner the hot water is shut off they're only allowed to use ambient temperature water when it's cleaned and then they start to process over with exception of a very very small run all of the matzo we make are is not shimura mata we still realize that a lot of this matzah not only of course is kashila pesach but is also sometimes used by people at the seder so from the point of mixing until the mata is through the oven all of the handling of the matzah not the cleaning but the handling of the matzah is done by jewish people and also they have in mind that the matzah is being done the shame that's mitzvah that this is matzah that we're baking specifically for use to be mikayamar mitzvah of eating matzah so the mashikhin before they start at the beginning of the day and also between each particular mix they say that this matzah is being made le chain masas mitzvah okay we are in the room where the matzo gets made before it gets baked the mata comes down from the mixer down over here and this is the process and thereby center of iraq will show us all the different steps until the matzah is ready to get into the oven so the matzah as we saw upstairs is dumped into a hopper from here into our oven is about another seven minutes here as with just about this entire floor is not on the same 15-minute clock but we're also on a 15-minute clock every 15 minutes the mashiki can make a rotation and they clean all the equipment where they blow down and get rid of any matzah that falls off the line because if the matzah falls off the line and then it would fall back in it could potentially become humid so to avoid that we make sure that every 15 minutes we're going back to the equipment then blowing it off and cleaning it so that the equipment stays free of any debris that would fall back into the line during the production service center what happens first as soon as the master comes down so the matzah as we mentioned is coming down through this big hopper it goes through two sets of rollers a set of rollers here and another roller here as it comes down it falls onto what's called the laminator and what that does is that's gonna cut sheets it's rolling it into sheets here and these sheets are going to be layered they go through here they're cut with a knife and then it's going to go through a series of rollers where the matzah gets thinner and thinner and thinner this is the finishing roller where the matzah is now at exactly the right size from here it's going to go into the radar the radar makes holes in the matzo the reason for that is it lets the air escape as the matzah bakes if you didn't have holes in the matzo the matzo would puff up and potentially could become hummus so it goes from the finishing roller into the radler where it makes holes in the matzo but it's now one giant sheet of matzah the next thing that has to happen it has to be cut so it passes through this roller which cuts it into six different sections when our matzo is baking we do not want the matzos to be right next to each other out of fear that they'll lay one on top of the other and become comets so over here we have a spreading belt what this belt is it's narrower here it stretches and is wider on the other end and if you notice it makes separate lanes for each of the rows of matzah and it passes through a second set of knives that cuts it in the other direction and with the speed of the belt one belt is running a little faster than the other it's going to pull the matzo separate so when they enter the oven we're going to have individual squares of matzah so they can be completely baked when they go through the oven our mats is now about to go into the oven one of the very important things is you do not want any heat to be exposed to the matzah before it enters so the piha tanner the opening of the oven always has to stay cool the way we control that is there's a very small space we have fans we have shields to keep away the heat and we actually have exhaust that pulls the heat away even though the oven the oven is kept at or above 750 degrees so the matzo goes from a cold environment right away into a 750 degree oven that's our pia which is right here my hand is right up against the entrance to the tire it's cool to the touch once the matzo goes in it immediately goes to 750 degrees right before it goes to the oven there are two more primary concerns one of them is clue ice and the temperature of the pitana the mashkeek is looking for primarily three things he's looking for a kufu lice where there's one matzo on top of another he's also looking to make sure that the dough has been rated properly so that when it goes to the oven it doesn't create any blisters in the matzo additionally the mascara is checking to make sure that the cutter is working properly in some events there also can be pieces of dough that could be on top of the matzo which has to be removed as well there are multiple maschkikim working down in the sheeter room looking at all the critical control points where as the dough is becoming thinner and thinner as it goes through each laminator there are parts as you can see where there are pieces of dough that may fall off and get stuck on the side throughout the sheeter line there are multiple air guns which the masquicum are using to blow off the dough every 15 minutes the alarm goes off and the mosquito are instructed to go throughout the line and blow off those critical control points okay so we're now in the oven room the matzah passes through this oven makes its way down into the other side when it exits the oven it's completely baked as you can see over here we're in a self-contained area this wall was built to ensure the heat would stay inside the room as well as the flaps to ensure that the sheeting room always stays at a optimal temperature the matzah has reached its final destination it's out of the oven or by center what else has to be done from a cactus perspective once the matter reaches this point last part of our process is a final inspection we're looking for anything that could have been missed on the way into the oven or that could have happened in the oven i actually have a couple of samples this is called a couple where the matzah has a fold in it and any type of imperfection like that is pulled off the line here's another example that came off we spoke about the radar that made the holes if the holes aren't deep enough you potentially could have matza that's rejected this mashiach has a bell which will alert the other side if everything has to go into the garbage but he stands here this is could often be a very boring job because most of the time the monster passes without a problem if he has a problem if it's an individual monster he could pull it off himself which he uses an air gun to do if it's a more of a collective problem you could stop the line everything would then go into the garbage once the matzah makes its way down here it gets sorted by the picker this is not a conscious issue this is called the schubert machine used to be years ago there were a whole bunch of guys at the end of the oven pulling off the matzah and putting it into bins this is all automated anything that passes this point is good for pesach so the matzah that's not picked up because it's not exactly the right size will make its way onto the final line where it will go into matzo meal we have gone through the entire maths effect from beginning to end rabbi reich when did they start the production of a pesach here so the setting of the production at strike starts generally around rosh hashanah time it's a rigorous process we first have many applications coming through from uh we currently have eight mash kierkem that are spread out throughout the production process at critical points as you've seen throughout the video there's always seven mushkikam online one taking a break in between the process as i mentioned starts around rosh hashanah time and continues through all the way into pesach what has to happen to get the plant ready before shoshone to start the paste of production so first the process starts at the flour mills we they identify a mill where they're going to purchase their flour from we meet with the mills and we determine if they can produce a cultural face of flower at the mill at the at the straits facility the first process is to have the flower bins emptied out they will have actually personnel that will climb into the flower bins clean it out and then they'll push through two truckloads of flour through the entire system because unlike conventional koshers where you'll clean the tank and then boil it out with water there's no water that can be put into the system so they will receive customer peso flour they'll push through about a hundred thousand pounds of flour through the system uh when it comes to the actual uh production area uh the mosquito will spend hours taking apart the the cutter the belts and cleaning them for the actual uh oven the oven is run at 800 degrees for an hour and then the belts before and after are blow torched also on the shoe machine which has those cups which pick up the matzo those are also put into a pot where we do our gala before they begin production so now that we've prepared the mata factory for pesach we had the opportunity to go through the master bakery and we hope all those who are learning mustache will enjoy these videos and will be able to intersect the machine matzah baking experience with their learning experience you