Afterwards, the head of the household takes two matzot that are shemurot, holding the whole and the broken piece together. For the master has taught: Everyone acknowledges that on Passover night one holds the whole piece of matzah and the half piece together. What is the reason? We do so because matzah is called the bread of the needy: just as it is the way of the needy to break the bread (and put some away for later) so one recites blessing holding the broken piece. One holds the broken piece together with a whole piece because of lechem mishneh, the two loaves over which one usually recites the blessing on Shabbat and holidays. One then recites the motzi and breaks the whole piece of matzah and does not yet take from the previously broken piece of matzah since reciting the blessing on a 'whole loaf' is the more common practice. After reciting the blessing al akhilat matzah, one takes a bit of both pieces of matzah and eats them together. One should lean when eating the matzah. Some of the Gaonim are of the opinion that one makes the motzi on the previously broken piece of matzah and al akhilat matzah on the whole piece. Some follow one opinion and others follow the other opinion!

Afterwards, one takes some of the hazeret and recites the blessing al akhilat maror, dipping it in the haroset. This is good because of kafah a type of poisonous substance sometimes found on greens. Others say that kafah is a type of worm and that the haroset keeps it from harming the person who eats it.

Each person at the table receives at least an olives-worth of hazeret dipped in the haroset. One does not lean when eating it since the Talmud says that maror does not require leaning, since it is an allusion of the verse, "they embittered them," and leaning is a symbol of freedom. One does not have to recite the blessing borei p'ri ha-adamah since the blessing over the matzah exempts us from other blessings on the food. Anything that is now part of the meal no longer requires a separate blessing either before or after it.

After eating the maror, each person takes part of the third piece of shemurah matzah along with the hazeret and makes a sandwich, eating them as one without leaning since it contains the bitter herbs. One eats it as a reminder of the temple, just as Hillel did, for the verse says, "You shall eat it with matzah and maror. In the time of the Temple, Hillel would recite the blessing over the matzah and then the blessing over the maror. He would then eat them together since both of them were commandments contained in the Torah and one did not cancel out the other. At this time we recite and eat them separately since matzah is a Torah commandment while maror is only a rabbinic commandment. When there is a Passover offering, maror is a Torah commandment; in a time when there is no Passover commandment, the maror is only a rabbinic commandment. We cannot eat them together after reciting the blessings since the rabbinic commandment would cancel out the Torah commandment. Therefore, we do them separately and only then do we eat them together; since we have already recited the blessing there is no blessing for the Hillel sandwich. Ibn Yarhei writes that the optimal way to perform the commandment is to not have any interruptions between the blessings over the matzah and the making of the Hillel sandwich. In this way the blessing over the matzah and the maror would include the making of the sandwich.