Menachot 63 –Fried and Baked Flour Offerings

Fried flour offerings were prepared either in a deep pan or in a flat pan. The latter was a griddle with only a slight lip around it. Rabbi Yose HaGlili says that the difference between the deep and flat offering is that the first one has a cover, but Rabbi Chanina ben Gamliel says that the cover has nothing to do with it, but that the offering prepared in a deep pan is soft and it quivers, whereas the one prepared in a shallow pan is thin and hard.

Beit Shammai are not certain if “deep” refers to the pan or to the offering, so according to them one who promises a deep-pan offering (not an offering in a deep pan) has to wait until Elijah the Prophet comes and explains how to do it.

The oven-baked flour offering can be either loaves baked with oil or wafers baked without oil and smeared with oil after baking. It was baked in a stove called “tanur,” which had a trapezoidal shape with an opening at the top. Bread was baked by affixing it to the walls of the oven.

Art: Camille Pissarro - Eugene Murer At His Pastry Oven