While Manischewitz makes an array of kosher products, it was founded in 1888 as the country’s first commercial matzah bakery — and matzah remains central to its mission.
Like most kosher food manufacturers, Manischewitz’s busiest season is Passover. Fifty percent of its business involves kosher-for-Passover food, particularly matzah.
Manischewitz begins making Passover matzah immediately after Labor Day and continues until late February. During the five-month season, up to 20 mashgichim (kosher supervisors) oversee the product.
This year, for the first time, the factory used only kosher-for-Passover flour year-round, even for its daily matzah. Although the flour is more expensive to produce, it costs the company much less than shutting down the entire plant for four or five weeks every summer for re-kashering. Now the annual kashering takes about a week.
During the height of the Passover production season, one or two truckloads of flour arrive at the Manischewitz plant every day, about 500,000 pounds a week.
Nearly 76 million sheets of matzah are produced each year, enough to circle the globe.
Production is carefully controlled to ensure that water comes into contact with the flour for less than 18 minutes. Longer than that and, according to rabbinic authorities, leavening begins.
In industrial production, a mashgiach must watch the flour from the time the wheat is milled until water is introduced to the flour during the mixing process. At that point, the dough is given even closer supervision to make sure it is completely baked in less than 18 minutes.
At Manischewitz, Passover matzah begins its life in a wheat field in one of the Mid-Atlantic states; the exact location is a trade secret. Red winter wheat is the preferred variety for unleavened bread because it is low in protein; protein in the dough produces air pockets that cause it to rise during baking.
The milled flour is kept dry in moisture-resistant bins, usually for no longer than a few days, until it can be transferred to a tanker truck for a three-hour journey to Newark, N.J.
When a newly washed tanker truck arrives at the mill, the mashgiach, Rabbi Yoel Lowenstein, crawls inside the enormous steel tank with a flashlight to check for moisture. He runs his hand along the curved sides and feels carefully under the jagged metal rim before crawling out.
After the tanker is filled with 50,000 pounds of flour, Lowenstein stretches plastic wrap over all of the truck’s valves, and affixes an Orthodox Union plastic seal to the metal hatch. If even one seal is compromised during the journey, so is the flour’s integrity.
A truck carrying Passover flour to Newark once got a flat tire and the impact blew out one of the seals. The entire 50,000-pound load had to be discarded.
After the flour arrives in Newark, the mixing and baking process is timed to the second. Five batches of dough are mixed every 14 minutes, and before each batch hits the conveyor belt, one of two mashgichim monitoring the mixing system grabs an egg-sized amount called the “hallah” and throws it in a bin for later discarding, according to Jewish law.
The rest of the dough moves over and under a series of metal rollers that press it into thinner and thinner sheets, until the dough is one-fourth of an inch thick. A final perforating roller scores it and adds tiny holes to keep it flat during baking.
The dough hits the 700-degree oven about 14 minutes after the flour and water are first mixed. The legal limit is 18 minutes, but the company gives itself some wiggle room.
If the system breaks down and the dough does not reach the oven in time, it must all be thrown out and the entire line taken apart and re-kashered. That happened once last year, wreaking havoc with the schedule.