Burned my first sourdough loaf at a community bake-off in Portland last spring and the judge actually laughed out loud

I forgot to score the top and it exploded in the oven like a potato bomb, has anyone else had a bake-off disaster that made the whole room go quiet?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_morgan1d ago

Oh man, the potato bomb visual has me cackling (I'm so sorry though, really). I did a bake-off once where I forgot to add salt and the judges' faces went from confused to horrified in about two seconds flat. The silence was so thick you could've spread it on toast - if the toast didn't taste like cardboard, that is.

hannahcraig2d ago

I mean, 'laughed out loud' is brutal. Was that before or after the potato bomb went off? I gotta ask - did you try to scrape off the charcoal and serve it anyway? Because I feel like there's a whole level of awkward silence that comes when someone's holding up a hockey puck of bread and everyone's just waiting for someone to try a bite.

morganmartinez2d ago

Gotta admit, I used to be one of those people who thought you could just scrape off the burnt parts and it'd be fine. Then my sister made a loaf for a family dinner that was so black on the bottom it looked like a fossil. She tried to serve it anyway and my dad just sat there holding a slice like it was a museum piece. @hannahcraig you're totally right about that whole layer of awkward silence, it was deafening. Nobody wanted to be the one to take the first bite but everyone was waiting for someone else to do it. Changed my whole view on burnt food, now I just toss it and start over.