Bread of Affliction?
Have you ever been tempted to buy Ezekiel 4:9 Bread just because of its name? I haven’t.
When God tells Ezekiel to make bread from wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, He’s describing the type of food that the Jews would be forced to eat in exile. Normal bread would have been made from wheat flour alone, as it is today. This bread, in contrast, is made from all kinds of garbage. It’s supposed to taste like crap. Ezekiel even cooks it over crap (though in those days, that was considered normal). The bread is actually supposed to be cooked over human crap, but the prophet manages to wriggle out of that one and upgrade to bovine crap.
At any rate, it isn’t supposed to be good.
The producers of Ezekiel 4:9 bread explain why we should be expected to eat this stuff:
We discovered when these six grains and legumes are sprouted and combined, an amazing thing happens. A complete protein is created that closely parallels the protein found in milk and eggs.
Of course, they could have created the same whole protein from any combination of grains and legumes. But never mind; they decided to follow God’s recipe, and the result is, in fact, quite nutritious, with a full 4 grams of protein per slice in addition to three grams of dietary fiber. So when a friend left town and gave me her leftover Ezekiel 4:9 bread, I was willing to try it.
Truth be told, it doesn’t taste like crap. It tastes pretty much like bread. There’s a mild sourdough-like flavor in the background and a hint of sprouts that I think I might even develop a taste for over time. Or not. But I’ll certainly finish the package.
This experience has led me to reconsider Ezekiel’s so-called ordeal. He got to lie around for a year and a half and eat reasonably decent, high-protein bread that he didn’t have to cook over human dung after all. Compared to marrying a cheating prostitute (Hosea) or walking around wearing yoke-bars (Jeremiah), that really doesn’t seem so bad.
Cross-posted to Apikorsus.
Note: The bread is Kof-K parve.
Do we know that Ezekiel would have had the time to leaven his bread? Sourdough leavening — the only kind available to him — is a time-consuming process, and was considered an Egyptian-style luxury during the Biblical period. Also, I have to wonder if we have any evidence of sprouted grains and legumes being used for anything other than malt back then. Oh, and did they use any refined flour, or are the wheat, barley and spelt all whole-grain flours? The exiles would have used nothing but whole grains, which are more nutritious and less expensive to produce.
Just out of curiosity, what kids of beans did the makers of Ezekiel Bread use? Members of the chickpea, fava and mung families would make sense, but haricot (”common”) beans are native to the New World.
Do we know that Ezekiel would have had the time to leaven his bread?
I don’t think that time was much of an issue. If we take this prophecy literally, he was about to lie on his side for roughly a year and a half.
Sourdough leavening — the only kind available to him — is a time-consuming process, and was considered an Egyptian-style luxury during the Biblical period.
Pardon my (inexcusable) ignorance, but how do we know that leavened bread was a rare luxury? I would have thought that most households would have kept some sourdough starter around from one harvest season to the next. (In fact, that’s how I understood the injunction against leaven on Passover. I thought it was a time to get rid of your old sourdough starter and begin afresh, with the year’s new grain.)
In any case, Ezekiel 4:9 bread is leavened with yeast. It’s also shaped as a loaf and sliced, while the prophet’s original bread would have taken the form of flat rounds, like pita (as the Hebrew `ugot implies).
Oh, and did they use any refined flour, or are the wheat, barley and spelt all whole-grain flours?
One of the peculiarities of Ezekiel 4:9 bread is that it isn’t made from flour at all, but from sprouted grains. The producers claim that this makes the bread more nutritious.
Just out of curiosity, what kids of beans did the makers of Ezekiel Bread use?
Soybeans :)
What is worth noting is that the “sprouted grain” used rather than just grinding the berries to flour makes the bracha - shehakol!
I never thought of that! Crazy!!
I didn’t say that leavening was “rare,” merely that it was a luxury. To put it another way, bread was not always assumed to be leavened then as it is now. Mishnah Pesach obviously sees matzah as an everyday food, not as something you only eat once a year.
Unleavened bread can be made in a few minutes, while bread leavened with wild yeast can take six hours or more. A starter requires a certain degree of knowledge and effort to maintain, and in the days before refrigeration would have needed constant flour refreshments, making it potentially wasteful in times of need. It seems unlikely that people struggling to survive would bother with leavening.
Gotcha.
I love this brand of bread. Try the raisin bread - it is deelish, very low calorie, filling, and good for you. I won’t eat any other.
What is bracha-shehakol? I love Ezekial bread and would love to make my own…but how?
Suze:
The bracha you would say over the bread is not hamotzi, as it is over most bread, but shehakol, due to the unusual nature of the grains (well, sprouts) in the bread.
What is the source for saying shehacol over sprouted breads?
Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz in KosherQuest’s December 31, 2000 Kosher Alerts:
> 3. Alert: Food For Life makes an Ezekiel bread certified by the
> Kof k which uses only sprouted grains. Since no actual grain is
> being used, only the sprouts, a Shehakol and Borei Nefashos
> should be said. We do not wash over this “bread” as well.’
…and straight from the packaging:
> There are 18 amino acids present in this unique bread - from
> all vegetable sources - naturally balanced in nature.
Uh, hello? *18* amino acids. That’s chet yud, chai - life, to anyone who’s counting gematriyot.
As stated elsewhere on the loaf’s package:
“This Biblical Bread is Truly the Staff of Life.”
Some of my friends eat Ezekiel 4:9 on a regular basis, and not to take away from Rav Eidlitz, but, apparently there is a makhloket re: if it’s motzi or shehakol since there are both “malted” and “sprouted” barley listed as ingredients.
A very accurate halakhic definition of lechem, anyone?
Malted grain is basically just sprouted grain that has been dried after sprouting (and sometimes roasted as well).
Halakhically, bread is made from ground flour of the 5 species of grain (exactly what those are is a matter of some debate, but, without a doubt, wheat, barley, and spelt are on that list), water, leavening agents, and salt. It also has to be baked. If it has too many other flavors added or if does not have the doughy appearance of bread, then it is considered “pat haba bikisnin” which is only hamotsi if eaten in sufficiently large quantities. But the ground 5 grains and the baking are lacking it is never hamotsi.
The definition seems to arise from the way people commonly eat “bread” — the staple of the diet. It is unclear if the definition was permanently fixed at some point in history or if it changes with the changing habits of the majority of people (which people anyway?).
Sprouted grains are probably indeed shehakol, because that is not the normal way of eating grains (the normal way of eating grains is to grind them and cook them into cake-mezonot or bread-hamotsi). Now, I don’t understand exactly how this Ezekiel 4:9 bread is made — is it made from ground sprouts or from whole sprouts? If whole sprouts, then probably shehakol, but if ground sprouts, then I’m not sure that that is different enough from regular bread to warrant not saying hamotsi (or at least mezonot)…
BS”D
It depends upon how much the grains are sprouted. I believe that I told the story of my attempt to convince Rav Belsky that typical beer should be kosher for Pesach (for Sephardim) due to its being produced from plants rather than grain. He understood my argument, but didn’t buy it, because malt, after the kilning and de-awning, looks like grain, and the flour made from it looks like flour. So how much is sprouted grain sprouted? If it’s really made from fresh sprouts, then if one used (kosher lePesach) wine yeast rather than bread yeast, would that make Ezekiel bread kosher lePesach (by Sephardic standards? Somehow, I don’t think so. But it does open intriguing possibilities.