Passenger ripped for baking sourdough bread on flight: ‘That’s an airplane — not a bakery’
That’s not the way to make the dough rise.
A baking influencer has been ripped as “inconsiderate” after making bread for her sister while aboard a long-haul flight.
“Do you want to see the final results?” Maria Baradell teased in a clip of the sky-high cooking hack that’s blowing up on Instagram. The content creator, who goes by @leafandloafco on the platform, frequently shares baking tips with her thousands of viewers on the platform.
For her latest video, Baradell decided to take her cooking tutorials to new heights and whip up a loaf of sourdough from scratch while flying to Spain.
“I want to surprise my sister with a fresh loaf of bread,” Baradell wrote in the caption describing this pie-in-the-sky scheme.
The accompanying footage shows her mixing water, flour and salt in a bowl on her tray table. She then proceeds to knead the dough and mold it into shape, essentially treating the plane like a prep kitchen at 30,000 feet.
“Looking beautiful,” gushes Baradell, who explained that she slept during the “bulk fermentation.”
Thankfully, the home cook didn’t try and bake the loaf on board, instead opting to wait until she reunited with her sister in Spain to pop the bun in the oven, as demonstrated in a follow-up clip.
Nonetheless, viewers deemed the stunt half-baked, arguing that the plane was not the appropriate setting for a cooking tutorial.
“Imagine you settle into your seat and the person next to sets up a camera and starts taking out bowls, ingredients, and making bread,” criticized one commenter.
Another wrote, “This is ridiculous! All for social media attention. Geez!”
Many even deemed the high-frying feat potentially dangerous given that she could have been in the vicinity of passengers with gluten allergies.
“This is inconsiderate for all the people on the plane allergic to wheat and/or gluten,” fumed one. “If I was sat next to you, I would ask for a new seat immediately and a full refund because it would make me sick for several weeks to just inhale the flour. Please be more considerate next time.”
Another critiqued, “Looks really cute but please don’t do it in planes, it’s a really closed place and a celiac could suffer an intoxication, the flour can easily ‘fly’ and spread.”
Meanwhile, one crew member argued that Baradell was likely contaminating the bread given the unsanitary airplane environment, where they’d witnessed passengers clip their toenails, vomit and even change diapers on the tray table.
“Enjoy your germ-bread,” they snarked. “That’s an airplane — not a bakery. Learn some manners, people.. please.”
Baradell addressed her critics in the aforementioned follow-up footage, declaring, “#milehighsourdoughclub won’t be a thing.”
“I was trying to be creative after I saw another creator making pasta in-flight, but thanks to your comments I learned this was not a great idea,” she wrote. “I am very thankful for the people who shared their feedback in a kind way, but it’s ok if you want to hate on it, I had good intentions.”
Baradell is not the first to be put on the no-fry list.
In December, another food influencer raised eyebrows — and likely the national security threat level — after cooking garlic shrimp in an airplane lavatory.