Making Matzo! A baking demonstration with award-winning baker, Barak Olins and food historian, Jordan Rosenblum

Making Matzo! In this cooking demonstration, James Beard Award-winning baker Barak Olins will teach students how to make the most delicious bread known to humankind: matzo! An unleavened bread associated with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and the Jewish holiday of Passover, matzo has a rich and complex history. As students make their matzo, Professor Jordan Rosenblum will discuss the changing shape and associations of this Jewish bread, from its (likely) beginnings as a pliable pita to its more recognizable form as a flat cracker. Come to get your hands dirty with flour (from Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick) and water! Stay to learn a little bit about this quintessentially Jewish bread. 

Barak Olins launched ZUbakery out of a barn in Freeport in 2000 and for nearly twenty years he sold his baked goods exclusively at the Brunswick farmer’s market. In 2022, he opened ZUBakery as a brick-and-mortar boulangerie in Portland’s West End. In 2024, Zu received the national award for outstanding bakery from the James Beard Foundation.

Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His most recent book, Forbidden: A 3,000- Year History of Jews and the Pig, won a 2024 National Jewish Book Award. In addition, he is the author of Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature; The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World; and Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism, as well as coeditor of four volumes, including Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food and Animals and the Law in Antiquity.

In the evening, Prof. Todd Berzon will host a conversation with Barak Olins and Jordan Rosenblum at 7:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium. More information can be found here: https://cglink.me/2dK/r1946434

Sponsored by the Harry Spindel Memorial Lecture Fund.

 

Office of Stewardship | Website | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Student Activities , Rachel Lord Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, Center for Multicultural Life, Bowdoin Culinary Club, Bowdoin Organic Garden, Hillel, MacMillan House, Religion, Jewish Life

Contact the organizers