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What Beracha Does One Recite on Pita Chips?

One of the snacks commonly sold today is toasted bread chips. The chips are made with the same ingredients as bread – flour and water, with a bit of seasoning – but they are baked until they are dry, hard and crunchy. Should we regard these chips as a snack, similar to pretzels and kaak, such that their Beracha should be "Mezonot," or are they considered just like bread, and require "Ha’mosi"?

There is a general rule that once bread is baked, the bread retains its status of "Ha’mosi" thereafter. If a person puts a piece of bread in the toaster to make it crunchy, it nevertheless retains its formal Halachic status of bread and requires "Ha’mosi." As opposed to snacks like kaak, which from the outset are baked into crunchy snacks, most pita chips and the like are baked as ordinary bread, and then broken into small pieces and baked again until they become crunchy. Since the chips were initially baked as bread, they require "Ha’mosi" even though they were subsequently baked a second time. This is the ruling of Hacham Ovadia Hedaya (1890-1969), in his work Yaskil Abdi (vol. 1, Orah Haim 9).

Although there may be some companies that produce the chips differently, and therefore each company’s procedure needs to be determined, the vast majority of pita chips are first made as ordinary bread and then baked again, so their Beracha is "Ha’mosi."

Summary: Although pita chips are dry and crunchy like snacks, they nevertheless require "Ha’mosi," as they are generally first baked as ordinary bread.

 


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