This Brioche Bread Fail Had Reddit Laughing
Bread seems like one of the easiest things to bake at first. After all, it only requires flour, water, salt, and yeast. But once you've rolled up your sleeves to get down to it, you'll likely realize the gravity of the mammoth task you've taken on. First, you need the right kind of flour and yeast. Then, you've gotta be careful not to kill the latter (via Eat This, Not That!). Once you've nailed the yeast bit — a task in itself —–there's the entire back and forth of kneading the dough just enough and allowing it to proof and rise. If you've managed to power through it all, you then have to wait to eat the sweet fruit of your effort till the bread cools down completely. Ah, the perils of baking! So many things can and there are some big mistakes everyone makes when baking bread.
In a hilarious Reddit discussion, an enthusiastic bread baker seems to have found out exactly how the process can go wrong. Sharing a picture of the mishap, the user said that their brioche bread was looking promising until they sliced into it and found a huge pocket of air between the crust and the bread inside. As always, Reddit had jokes about this brioche fail as well as pieces of advice for the baker.
Overproofing seems to be the culprit of the deflated brioche
The general consensus amongst Redditors is that the brioche bread was likely overproofed, causing the crust to bake just fine but the insides to deflate upon slicing. "Pretty sure overproofed and had a thin sheet of dough on top holding all the gas," the original poster explained. Now that the pocket of air is beyond fixing, some suggested making the most of the hollow gap between the bread by stuffing it with whipped cream cheese frosting and calling it a stuffed brioche. One user even pointed out that when moonshine was prohibited back in the day, their grandfather would smuggle the illicit drink inside hollowed bread.
Another comment jokingly wrote, "The brioche looks fine on the outside but is not on the inside. It is not a perfect brioche but it is a relatable brioche." Others piped in, "It's like looking in a mirror," and, "We all feel like that on the inside sometimes brioche, we all do." Some even hilariously compared the failed brioche to bags of Lays and Walker's potato chips, joking that both have more empty air inside than actual food. One wise Redditor advised, "Just think of it as half full instead of half empty." A brioche half-filled with air inside is still better than no brioche at all.