Why are the Hashgochos promulgating a fraud: Oat Matzos

Al rishon rishon. When did the mix up occur? Maybe when they disregarded the Rambam Chometz Umatza 5;1 and Brachos 3;1,

What are the grains, two wheats and three barleys. Today, we have way more cultivars of wheat, so we really are meshubad to the science that shows us what the profile of the grain is. Barley we don’t use because it is softer and faster to become chometz, probably not too tasty, and regarded as animal food in the Mishna. Spelt and rye, both being wheat look and grow alikes are both she’eladik because rye is really a cold climate plant, and spelt may be sort of new to the scene. In terms of gluten content, the line up in descending order is wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and oats at 0.

Busybody, thank you for the scientist compliment, Posek is way off. Other than the pejorative title, I was just asking questions based on what is and isn’t. As you cited, what Shiboles Shual is, is shanui bemachlokes. Truth, often but not always, has much to do with what is in front of the eyes. Look at the Rambam in Berachot, grind some oats into flour, try to make a loaf of bread out of it, and get back to me.

Just curious busybody, did you ever see oats in the raw, did you ever see it growing? Yeah,I saw, I wouldn’t make oatmeal for pesach, but I humbly would desist from making any brocho other than adomo on it. DAGAN, ok, hameshes haminim, enough to say only maybe.

MDG: I bake sourdough (really really chometz) I did straight barley with just my wheat based starter (about 5% of the batter including water– I read what you read and didn’t want to waste the starter.) With a real long proofing time, it came out something flat like an english muffin, and somewhat tougher. It tasted medium bad, but it had tzuras hapas. As to baking powder, there is a fascinating discussion of hamutz al yedei davar acher, starting with Rav Bakeshi Doron, and followed by lots of arguments. (kovetz hamoadim, pesach bais. (Moriah)

Dr Hall: I apologized for the phrasing of the title already. Just if you accept that the mechanics of hametz requires gluten, oats just doesn’t make the cut. I know that there are times where halacha follows reality, and times where halacha paskins its own reality, I sense that this is one of the former.

Sam2, it is more than 30 days before the chag, and this is a year old rant, but that is a great mehalach. The Chachomim understood chometz as the instant self acting variety that you get with the grains that contain amylase and gluten, and YBN that any “dagan” and any ferment is chometz. A good tasty recipe for fermented rice is let it soak for FOUR DAYS, blend to a loose paste in blender or processor, season and steam for 20 minutes.

About Maklokes, it is because a) we have been urbanized, and even when not, we were disallowed from agricultural pursuits. b) crops and cereals were constantly bred, selected and improved. The wheat of today is not the wheat of our grandfathers, and certainly not the variety of the Mishna. Multipy the confusion by upheavals and change of continent and of micro climate. So we are forced to rely on second hand information. BH, two things happened in the last 150 years. Jews returned to agriculture (this was really big news for esrogim too) and we became able to analyze plants by their components. We can see in a lab what chazal describe as happening to certain grains exposed to water for 20 minutes. And we can be mevarer sfeikos, and new sfeikos arise, like why would we think oats are a chametz-able grain.

Oi vay, RK you are likely to get a drubbing from the infalibility crowd for that hava amina. Rashi also describes the Shiboles Shual as looking like a fox tail. The seed in its green husk does indeed have that shape, but if he meant the cluster of grain ( there isn’t one in oats) he may have been referring to a heavy awned barley which would also look like a tail, and the latter would also conform to the discussion on the daf, and the mishna in Kilayim, which groups Shiboles shual with the barleys, and not with the wheats. A wild cultivar of oat type grass grows all over the hills here, and one hypothesis I saw has this inedible type being vectored up to Europe by the Romans, and there it crossed with something to become aveena sativum.