Rabbi Eliezer takes the most expansive position in this debate. Like the sages, he rules that a person fulfills the matzah obligation with all types of dough and with second-tithe grain. But his interpretation of "bread of affliction" goes in an entirely different direction — one focused not on ingredients but on labor.
What makes bread "the bread of a poor man"? Not what goes into it, Rabbi Eliezer argues, but how it is made. A poor man's household operates differently from a wealthy one. In a poor man's home, his wife kneads the dough herself, and he heats the oven himself. There are no servants, no hired bakers, no elaborate kitchen operations. The entire process is intimate, hands-on, and stripped of any delegation.
"So, here" — Rabbi Eliezer applies this image to the Passover matzah. The "affliction" is not about the absence of oil or honey in the dough. It is about the process of making it. The matzah should be prepared the way a poor family prepares its bread: directly, personally, without outsourcing any step to others.
This reading transforms "bread of affliction" from a recipe restriction into an experiential requirement. The commandment asks you not merely to eat simple bread but to participate in the labor of making it — to feel, in your hands and in your kitchen, what poverty actually demands.
Three opinions, three definitions of affliction: Rabbi Yishmael looks at the ingredients, the sages look at the kneading liquid, and Rabbi Eliezer looks at who does the work.