The following is a NY Daily News article:
A man has an unorthodox style of preparing for Passover – a backyard bakery.
Zecheriah Brauner, 89, fires up a huge outdoor oven once a year to make matzo for the Jewish holiday, which starts this Monday.
“My father used to make matzo in our home,” Brauner said, recalling his childhood in rural Hungary. “So let me do what my father used to do.”
A retired baker, Brauner began the tradition of cooking the thin, crispy wafers in his backyard 20 years ago, and it now feeds more than 150 relatives and neighbors.
“It looks like any other driveway the rest of the year,” said Sandy Brauner, 21, one of Zecheriah’s 102 grandchildren. “It takes a lot of work.”
Kosher rules forbid sunlight from shining on the dough, so Sandy rigs a high canopy and wooden walls that block out rays.
Then they build the stations for mixing flour and water, flattening the dough, and rolling it into discs.
A wood- and coal-burning oven sits in a shed and bakes the matzos in under a minute.
Over the afternoon, it churns out hundreds of them for family and friends who flock to the house and serve them at Seder – the feast on the first two nights of Passover.
“Every half step is written out on how to make it,” said Alexander Rapaport, 33, another grandson of Brauner.
Luckily, help is nearby. The family calls 54th St. “Brauner’s block,” because relatives live in eight other houses on the street.
“It gives you a different emotional feeling to eat matzo that you made yourself,” said Yosef Rapaport, 56, Brauner’s son-in-law.
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
