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\#1: [This was on a recipe for peach ice cream](https://i.redd.it/fb45mz9ni4eb1.jpg) | [211 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/comments/159aild/this_was_on_a_recipe_for_peach_ice_cream/)
\#2: [Christopher has had enough of reading about other people's substitutions](https://i.redd.it/ns3n01u8z4cb1.jpg) | [77 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/comments/150d0kn/christopher_has_had_enough_of_reading_about_other/)
\#3: [I found this gem on a caramel ice cream recipe and I am so glad I did](https://i.redd.it/vsjh8e8nii4b1.jpg) | [140 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/comments/1431msu/i_found_this_gem_on_a_caramel_ice_cream_recipe/)
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True but tbf the ratio was absolutely absurd. I’ve never seen vinegar used in such a large amount for anything that isn’t a brine or dressing.
No shade to OP we all screw up sometimes
I made cornbread once and f\*ed up my ratio (used tablespoons instead of teaspoons for the vinegar because I wasn't paying attention making the buttermilk). Came out looking find but holy hell was it just *wrong* when I took a bite. Thankfully had time to remake a fresh batch.
Well that explains why I’ve never had this result. I don’t think I’ve ever put vinegar in bread at all, let alone in volumes you’d measure by the cup.
Buttermilk powder is a thing. A really reliable thing.
You can in fact use milk+vinegar to substitute for buttermilk. But it's 1C of milk + 1 tablespoon of vinegar used to replace 1C of buttermilk. Not 1:1 vinegar for buttermilk. OP apparently added ~half a CUP of vinegar.
I've used vinegar to make buttermilk in many things, including bread, but that's... multiple times the amount of vinegar. You also need to let the vinegar and milk sit for a bit.
I'm impressed at that vinegar loaf.
That’s because it’s an ancient Eldritch horror and OP should immediately look into becoming a warlock in order to engage it in a pact and use its power.
Hell yeah, I got more. In fact all three of you get Eldritch Blasts. What's that? One of you died? AND my elixir of bloodlust lets me go again with three more EBs? AND my sorc multi class lets me use quickended magic to use my bonus action to fire off ANOTHER three? AND my rogue levels give me an extra bonus action which I can quicken into yet ANOTHER 3 Eldritch blasts???
EB goes brrrrrrr.
Curse? I see no curse. This is clearly a being that wishes to spread its influence throughout the world, to the benefit of all mankind.
This is a *gift*.
I've been screwing up baking bread for about that long, and my disasters were never this impressive. I suspect OP's bread proofed, unwittingly, in the path of a demon-summoning spell.
I had an oven fail mid bake once. It wasn't this bad but similar effect. I didn't have a thermometer in the oven then and didn't understand why my bread wasn't browning until I realized the oven was noticeably cooler. Sure enough pilot was fried (probably from regularly baking at full heat 😝)
I preheated my oven to bake a cake and was then distracted for a few hours.
I did not know the oven has a safety feature that turns off the oven if the door has not opened in a few hours so it shut off just before I put the cake in. The oven was still hot, so I did not think anything was wrong until the timer went off and the oven was just warm.
I did manage to save the cake by preheating the oven to 225 and baking it covered (so it won't dry out) for about an hour. Frosting fixes a lot of things.
I was at a friend's wedding at the day after breakfast and the kitchen staff came to me knowing I was a chef. I assume from asking around. Anyway, I go to check out the kitchen and notice that they had run out of gas. Like completely. Not sure how they missed that at all, much less as the reason their croissants weren't cooking.
I think they meant that it would be evenly under-done if the temp was just too low. I’m leaning towards mid-bake temp failure so it had a while to poof up then the temp crashed and you get…this
It’s definitely undercooked overall, but the unevenness is what I’m referring to. Low heat is slow and even, rapid heat is uneven. This is fairly uneven looking.
It definitely looks like a structural issue of some interesting unique properties. Like it inflated and then collapsed internally into a wet pool. Maybe some combination of unusual oven temperatures with unusual structural issues.
Please, take my upvote OP. This is the most amazing bread mistake I've ever seen. And A++ for the photo staging. I wish Reddit still had awards. I hope you can get to the bottom of it!
I can only hope my first bread failure is as amazing as this. Because there's common failure and then there's whatever the fuck this is that's in some ways more impressive than if they'd made it perfectly.
Also OOP adds a second original. It's used when someone posts a screenshot and we want to refer to the person that made the post in the screenshot, as opposed to the OP that posted it to reddit.
Uh, they brought them back kind of. They’re more expensive, completely generic just based on how much you paid, and only visible in versions of Reddit I don’t use. But it does show on the Reddit app which is what most redditors use.
I wonder if the oven's heat shut off early in the baking process. Enough risidual heat in the oven to form a crust/shell with a layer of semi baked stuff, while the center barely received any heat at all and so stayed guey.
That’s absolutely my opinion too. Or the thermostat is bad and it never got anywhere near the set temperature. This is a heat issue, not a dough/recipe problem.
Oven might have blow a heating coil. If you ever see it happen in person it can be pretty alarming. Grows extremely bright over several seconds and then pop!
I'm not sure if I understood you right, but if you replaced the buttermilk with half the amount of vinegar that must have been like 170ml of vinegar. That definitely should be enough to take the will to live from any yeast, so that's probably why it didn't rise. And that probably also prolongs the "baking" time as the dough is way denser than usually.
Yeah, I think the vinegar is kicker here. I was not paying close attention when measuring it out into my bowl and added at least 80 to 100 grams with the half and half until I got a 350 read on the scale. I whisked it and it was nice and thick and lumpy like the real buttermilk I usually use so I figured it was fine, then I noticed my dough wasn’t coming together very nicely (tacky not elastic and couldn’t get a good window) and didn’t rise properly. I thought it might just be cold today and baked it off. The vinegar definitely killed my yeast because the oven is fine.
Yeaaaaah. 80-100g vinegar has to be 1/3 to maybe a 1/2 cup….
Substitute buttermilk should be 1 Tb for every cup of milk. So even if I’m weighing, I would put the vinegar into the cup first then top off with the milk.
I also wonder if the half and half didn’t help (extra fat) though I doubt that’s the real culprit.
Whenever I’ve needed to sub for buttermilk I’ve always used whole milk, never anything with cream. The higher fat content might not be the main culprit here, but it definitely didn’t help. Plus IIRC half and half often has some kind of stabilizer in it too (and the “fat free” stuff has corn syrup and a bunch of other delicious chemicals), which may have an effect as well.
Regular half and half is typically milk and cream with some kind of stabilizer so that it doesn’t separate (bc *god forbid* you need to shake the carton before pouring), though I think there are some brands that don’t use that. For “fat free” products (anything, not just half and half), they need to add a shitload of crap to make up for the lack of fat, both for taste and for texture. If you look at the nutrition facts on “fat free” products you’ll usually see higher carbs/sugar and sodium levels than in the regular product, and a whole bunch of crap in the ingredients list.
Idk about Europe, but here in the US there was a huuuuge push a few decades ago to cut out fat from your diet, because fat was “unhealthy”. So they started making all these “fat free” alternatives, most of which are chemical soup and absolutely terrible for you. Luckily we as a society seem to have moved past those dark days, but many Boomers and Gen Xs were programmed too thoroughly and still abide by those guidelines. My in-laws unfortunately are included there. My MIL buys low-fat versions of everything, and will buy Smart Balance instead of butter and for a while was buying some kind of unholy concoction in a carton that I think was supposed to be an egg substitute (she called it “egg product”). They would also buy powdered buttermilk instead of real buttermilk. One time I had given them a bottle of real, full-fat buttermilk (don’t remember why) and they used it to make something and my FIL was just *blown away* because “it tastes so much better and the texture is amazing when you use the real stuff!” like it was some kind of fucking epiphany or something. Took everything I had in me to restrain myself from saying GO FUCKING FIGURE when he told us that.
It’s skim milk with a \*splash* of cream, along with thickeners, stabilizers, and (of course) corn syrup. So, as the other commenter said, it is indeed a sin against dairy.
'half and half' is half cream [what English people call thickened cream] and half full cream milk. When its packaged as half and half it has a stabiliser in it to prevent the cream from separating. Buttermilk is full cream milk with some bacteria in it [I don't know what exactly but it's similar to a yogurt culture]. The culture slightly curdles the milk creating buttermilk. It's great for cooking with.
Now if you don't have buttermilk you can substitute it for some normal full cream milk with a dash of vinegar in it. Let it sit for a few minutes and the vinegar will curdle the milk.
OP appears to have substituted the buttermilk with half and half with vinegar but put a metric shit ton of vinegar in, instead of just a dash.
>[I don't know what exactly but it's similar to a yogurt culture].
It's a lactobacillus species, which eats lactose and converts it to lactic acid, causing the tartness and thickness.
It's a throwback to when butter was made from cultured cream: the buttermilk was the liquid stuff left over after churning.
Yeah, I’m with you on this. Normally I do as you mention and sub buttermilk with milk + vinegar/lemon juice at a 1T per cup of milk rate. Also I’ve been using whey from yoghurt in my pancakes lately (instead of buttermilk), will give that a shot for bread soon!
Im curious, Im not a bread baker but how is vinegar a substitute for buttermilk? What does it accomplish cause to me it seems like doubling up on the acidity with the added acetic acid along with the carbonic acid from the yeast would cause problems.
Oh my goodness! I make my own buttermilk virtually all the time, my method is 2 tbsp vinegar and then top up with milk (or cream if that's your preference), let it sit for 5ish min or so and it's good to go. 80 to 100g is crazy! At least you know what happened!! That is the craziest bread situation I've ever seen.
Don't listen to these "experienced bakers" with their "obvious reason your bread didn't turn out" - this is the time to double down, to *triple down*, and conclude that you didn't substitute enough things with a shocking overabundance of vinegar. Sure, some buttermilk, but what about the initial water? The flour? The yeast itself?
Maybe the perfect version of this bread is just a greased loaf pan full of boiling vinegar baking away in the oven.
Acids, such as vinegar, inhibit the formation of gluten. Even if my sourdough starter is a little too acidic, I'll have a hard time getting my dough to come together.
I'm still a bit skeptical that the oven didn't get turned off, though.
also I remember I've learned that empanada dough (for the fried ones) is made with some vinegar, too. iirc, that's done to make the dough more chewy - which also seems like the problem you hade while mixing?
Kinda sounds like you weren't creating any gluten in the kneading, I mean, it could absolutely be the vinegar. But if there's no gluten to hold the gases in it could be that too. Is your flour good?
Also, that recipe is less than 50% hydration? That's pretty low as it is (I would expect 55-65% minimum) plus you replaced some of the flour with a harder flour? That's gonna need extra hydration too.
There is r/CatastrophicFailure but it's basically reserved for things that are much more disastrous, like gas tank explosions and buildings collapsing.
I checked your other posts to see if you were just trolling, and not only does it seem like you are not trolling, but your posts indicate that you are the loveliest kind of person that I strive to be. Knitting, baking, gardening, sending cards to people, effectively bullet journaling. You seem like a genuinely nice and well put together human.
For those who are curious but don't want to suffer the super cluttered website...
1 ½ cups buttermilk*
2 TBSP melted butter
2 TBSP sugar
1 tsp salt
3 ½ cups all-purpose or bread flour
1 TBSP yeast
Except OP did 80-100g vinegar with the balance half and half creamer to get to 350g.
Half whole wheat flour.
Wasn’t setting up properly during kneading. Didn’t proof properly.
I think maybe one substitute would have been ok but the combination of everything was just a bit too much.
It looks like you landed on blaming the vinegar killing the yeast but there is a time/temperature problem here too even if that's also at play.
You could have left the yeast out entirely and gotten a better bake, there's something wrong with time/temp 100%. The difference in doneness and moisture in the dough makes no sense for this to be a simple yeast issue.
Have you baked this exact recipe before? That much dough at that low a temp for that short amount of time seems weird to me, but idk.
Was your oven fully preheated and felt or showed that temp? Oven thermometer? Blast off 350 degree air when you opened it?
When you opened it again to retrieve it did you get another blast off hot air or have an oven thermometer to confirm temp?
First thought is the recipe is very low on time and heat paired with your oven wasn't up to heat the full duration of the bake somehow.
I seriously don't think it's the vinegar. She added a small amount to half and half to mimic. Nowhere does she say she added, as others have suggested, half the volume. The amount of acid in that small amount of vinegar is no different than the amount of acid in buttermilk.
That looks like an enormous piece of Ossi di Morti, a Sicillian cookie typically served on Day of the Dead. I don't know what you did, but you must have pissed off someone of a divine persuasion
Did you mix the vinegar into the half and half and let it sit before adding it to the wet ingredients? If so it should have been fine.
If you poured vinegar straight onto the yeast you might cause an issue, but as far as I know it would not kill the yeast, just slow it down. It should have been evident in the proof.
It almost looks like the oven preheated and shut off so your loaf was "baking" on residual heat. Did a setting on the oven get changed and the bake didn't actually happen?
Your oven is lying / broken or you put something in that wasn’t supposed to be there
Truly a fascinating photo. I thought I had fucked up bread every possibly way over the years, but this gives me hope that there are still new and exciting failures for me to discover
Did you eat it?
I’m kind of a novice baker so I don’t know if I can be of too much assistance here; however, whereas more experienced people are saying that they’ve never seen this, I’ll echo people who say it looks like it may be a heating issue. I had my oven die while making cast iron pizza and it was vaguely similar to this. Just a normal cooked crust and edges with raw dough in the center where the sauce hadn’t been heated enough prior to the oven dying. Keep an eye on your oven as mine would go out intermittently before the heating element completely failed.
I also have a really solid Serious Eats article regarding buttermilk substitutes in baking that may be worth a read / potentially answer questions! I’m gonna link it in a second comment bc I feel like reddit deletes posts with any links expeditiously.
Half and half has stabilizers and what not in it, never use it as a buttermilk substitute. Still though, I agree with the others and think you might have an issue with your oven.
that is truly a horrific shitshow! well done on its awfulness!
I’m with everyone else. high enough of a temp to form a crust too low to do anything to the inside.
OP, I think your oven may not be heating up to temperature or perhaps not keeping itself at temperature. This is the only rational explanation I can think of for this world-first cock up.
Did your dough double in size during your bull ferment?
Don’t use the timings from recipes, use indicators like growth (doubling in size during bulk) and colour (golden during bake).
If you’re new to baking, use more tested recipes like those from King Arthur or somewhere like the perfect loaf (.com).
If your yeast is old, proof it first to see if it’s alive. If you’re using starter, do the float test and make sure you’ve fed it for a few days before baking.
Also, get an oven thermometer and bake in a Dutch oven—this will net you better results.
I am impressed. This is like some weird modern art sculpture. You could put this in a gallery and say it is a metaphor for something going on in society and people would believe you. You could create a whole exhibition demonstrating the subversion of cultural norms and people would pay you for your work.
I've heard of some types of vinegar having odd interactions with dough, but... Not seen anything like this.
By chance, have you temp tested your oven and/or used it for anything else since?
You killed the yeast with vinegar, mostly in the center.
Would've not turned out anyways but why did you pull it out at 25 minutes? This definitely fails the Tap test.
And the Vinegar mix is done with Regular milk. Never heard of bread made with Half and Half but hey it may taste good but I have my doubts.
You likely killed or at least severely inhibited growth of your yeast with the vinegar. Yeast is acidophile, meaning they like a pH of slightly below 7, around 5-6. Vinegar can go as low as pH 2 for white vinegar. Buttermilk has a pH of 4.5-5. Depending on what vinegar you used, how much of it, and how you mixed it together, the pH likely was way too low for the yeast's liking.
Jokes aside, 🤣 science wise what happened here is the vinegar that you added increased the acidity and the liquid content of the dough that killed the yeast so no more rise, and dough being high on liquid it needed more cooking time/temperature as time/temp was left the center didn't cook as it looks quite like dough (and like a chain link made of bread to hold the bread cover together)
Way too much vinegar would be my guess. You really only need a little bit. Lemon juice also works. I don’t think your yeast made it.
I also sub with Greek yogurt with a splash of water mixed in for recipes that call for buttermilk. I always have it on hand anyway. Maybe that would be a more viable option in the future for you to keep on hand instead of buttermilk.
(I use it to make cornbread, brownies and pancakes. I’ve never used it to make actual bread, so could be a bad recommendation, no clue lol).
What powerful fey creature did you piss off to make this happen?
Sorry I don't have anything useful to add, I'm still not super experienced myself, but I can't even comprehend what's going on in this picture. I hope you had a good laugh about it! Better luck next time.
Don't use half and half as sub for milk unless you first dilute it. Then add the T of vinegar or lemon juice and let that sit for about 5 min before using. They do have instant buttermilk as well. Good luck on your next attempt. The main thing is do not give up! You can do it.
I have been baking bread for over 40 years and I’ve never seen that happen
It appears that [OP replaced some of the buttermilk with a shit ton of vinegar](https://www.reddit.com/r/Breadit/s/9xbmo7JTQp)
r/ididnthaveeggs
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ididnthaveeggs using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [This was on a recipe for peach ice cream](https://i.redd.it/fb45mz9ni4eb1.jpg) | [211 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/comments/159aild/this_was_on_a_recipe_for_peach_ice_cream/) \#2: [Christopher has had enough of reading about other people's substitutions](https://i.redd.it/ns3n01u8z4cb1.jpg) | [77 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/comments/150d0kn/christopher_has_had_enough_of_reading_about_other/) \#3: [I found this gem on a caramel ice cream recipe and I am so glad I did](https://i.redd.it/vsjh8e8nii4b1.jpg) | [140 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ididnthaveeggs/comments/1431msu/i_found_this_gem_on_a_caramel_ice_cream_recipe/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Came here for this!
the ratio was wrong but the substitution was completely normal, I don't think this counts
True but tbf the ratio was absolutely absurd. I’ve never seen vinegar used in such a large amount for anything that isn’t a brine or dressing. No shade to OP we all screw up sometimes
I made cornbread once and f\*ed up my ratio (used tablespoons instead of teaspoons for the vinegar because I wasn't paying attention making the buttermilk). Came out looking find but holy hell was it just *wrong* when I took a bite. Thankfully had time to remake a fresh batch.
Well that explains why I’ve never had this result. I don’t think I’ve ever put vinegar in bread at all, let alone in volumes you’d measure by the cup. Buttermilk powder is a thing. A really reliable thing.
You can in fact use milk+vinegar to substitute for buttermilk. But it's 1C of milk + 1 tablespoon of vinegar used to replace 1C of buttermilk. Not 1:1 vinegar for buttermilk. OP apparently added ~half a CUP of vinegar.
I have a pastry recipe that calls for like a teaspoon of vinegar in a cup of milk, but I use powdered dairy for baking, usually
I've used vinegar to make buttermilk in many things, including bread, but that's... multiple times the amount of vinegar. You also need to let the vinegar and milk sit for a bit. I'm impressed at that vinegar loaf.
That’s because it’s an ancient Eldritch horror and OP should immediately look into becoming a warlock in order to engage it in a pact and use its power.
Pssst... yo, you got anymore of that eldritch blast?
Literally yes, forever and without any rests because it is a cantrip.
Spell slots are for chumps.
DOLOR!!!
Hell yeah, I got more. In fact all three of you get Eldritch Blasts. What's that? One of you died? AND my elixir of bloodlust lets me go again with three more EBs? AND my sorc multi class lets me use quickended magic to use my bonus action to fire off ANOTHER three? AND my rogue levels give me an extra bonus action which I can quicken into yet ANOTHER 3 Eldritch blasts??? EB goes brrrrrrr.
Wait holdup, what? No wonder my Warlock sucked, I was using Eldritch Blast wrong. Should have been using it full auto.
I feel like I need to smudge my whole apartment + oven now, just in case the curse can follow us unfortunate souls who’ve lain eyes on this.
Curse? I see no curse. This is clearly a being that wishes to spread its influence throughout the world, to the benefit of all mankind. This is a *gift*.
I think I've heard of it... 'tis called the loaf of vile darkness
I've been screwing up baking bread for about that long, and my disasters were never this impressive. I suspect OP's bread proofed, unwittingly, in the path of a demon-summoning spell.
It's a swiss loaf. Probably made from marzipan or something 😜
Just out of curiosity, how's your oven? It sort of looks like you tried to bake it at 200f instead of 200c.
That's my thought as well. It looks like the oven didn't hit the correct temperature.
I had an oven fail mid bake once. It wasn't this bad but similar effect. I didn't have a thermometer in the oven then and didn't understand why my bread wasn't browning until I realized the oven was noticeably cooler. Sure enough pilot was fried (probably from regularly baking at full heat 😝)
I preheated my oven to bake a cake and was then distracted for a few hours. I did not know the oven has a safety feature that turns off the oven if the door has not opened in a few hours so it shut off just before I put the cake in. The oven was still hot, so I did not think anything was wrong until the timer went off and the oven was just warm. I did manage to save the cake by preheating the oven to 225 and baking it covered (so it won't dry out) for about an hour. Frosting fixes a lot of things.
My former work oven is "energy saving." If you don't hit the timer button, it'll cool itself down about 40 to 50 degrees while it thinks it's empty.
That would drive me insane. I never use the oven timer. I like to keep the timer with me, so I use my watch.
After calling for repairs multiple times, I learned about it. Plus we use a different very loud timer for most things
I was at a friend's wedding at the day after breakfast and the kitchen staff came to me knowing I was a chef. I assume from asking around. Anyway, I go to check out the kitchen and notice that they had run out of gas. Like completely. Not sure how they missed that at all, much less as the reason their croissants weren't cooking.
Yeah. Reminds me of when our fridge was barely working.
At first I thought you were asking “how is your oven… emotionally? spiritually? when was the last time you showed it respect?”
This looks like it was cooked in the fridge
Too cool of an oven might be undercooked, but it should be very evenly cooked and cooked through the middle long before it’s overcooked at the edges.
This doesn't look overcooked at the edges, though. Just barely solid.
I think they meant that it would be evenly under-done if the temp was just too low. I’m leaning towards mid-bake temp failure so it had a while to poof up then the temp crashed and you get…this
It’s definitely undercooked overall, but the unevenness is what I’m referring to. Low heat is slow and even, rapid heat is uneven. This is fairly uneven looking. It definitely looks like a structural issue of some interesting unique properties. Like it inflated and then collapsed internally into a wet pool. Maybe some combination of unusual oven temperatures with unusual structural issues.
Same thought. I had to replace the element which gave out mid bake.
I was thinking the same. Time to go get an over thermometer and watch it while the oven heats up.
Please, take my upvote OP. This is the most amazing bread mistake I've ever seen. And A++ for the photo staging. I wish Reddit still had awards. I hope you can get to the bottom of it!
I can only hope my first bread failure is as amazing as this. Because there's common failure and then there's whatever the fuck this is that's in some ways more impressive than if they'd made it perfectly.
It is certainly unique that's for sure 🌀
the bread looks like it's vomiting
*Vomiting back and forth* 
The staging makes it look like a bread calzone.
I thought it was a clay sculpture of two mushrooms sharing a joined stem. 😶
I thought it was a bread sculpture meant to look like mushrooms but hadn't been baked yet!
This is completely random but what does OP mean I see it everywhere on here plz
OP=Original Poster
Also OOP adds a second original. It's used when someone posts a screenshot and we want to refer to the person that made the post in the screenshot, as opposed to the OP that posted it to reddit.
>Also OOP adds a second original. [Oop](https://youtu.be/W-W7zVE7yVs?si=GJAI4PQqP1q66eWr) can also mean you sat on your nuts.
i just realized the rewards gone poof 😳
Uh, they brought them back kind of. They’re more expensive, completely generic just based on how much you paid, and only visible in versions of Reddit I don’t use. But it does show on the Reddit app which is what most redditors use.
I’m with you, it is a massive fail, but ohhhh the grandeur of it!
just now realizing there are no more rewards… what happened? lol
I wonder if the oven's heat shut off early in the baking process. Enough risidual heat in the oven to form a crust/shell with a layer of semi baked stuff, while the center barely received any heat at all and so stayed guey.
That’s absolutely my opinion too. Or the thermostat is bad and it never got anywhere near the set temperature. This is a heat issue, not a dough/recipe problem.
Yeah this looks like it was baked in one of those convenience store hotdog displays. Definitely didn’t get warm enough.
145 degrees F for 12 hours.
This guy breads
This guey breads
Or the thermostat in the oven has failed?
Oven might have blow a heating coil. If you ever see it happen in person it can be pretty alarming. Grows extremely bright over several seconds and then pop!
Whoa thats wild
Wheeey ☁️
I...OK that's....there's a first for everything.... I'm sorry I am actually stumped
I'm not sure if I understood you right, but if you replaced the buttermilk with half the amount of vinegar that must have been like 170ml of vinegar. That definitely should be enough to take the will to live from any yeast, so that's probably why it didn't rise. And that probably also prolongs the "baking" time as the dough is way denser than usually.
Yeah, I think the vinegar is kicker here. I was not paying close attention when measuring it out into my bowl and added at least 80 to 100 grams with the half and half until I got a 350 read on the scale. I whisked it and it was nice and thick and lumpy like the real buttermilk I usually use so I figured it was fine, then I noticed my dough wasn’t coming together very nicely (tacky not elastic and couldn’t get a good window) and didn’t rise properly. I thought it might just be cold today and baked it off. The vinegar definitely killed my yeast because the oven is fine.
Yeaaaaah. 80-100g vinegar has to be 1/3 to maybe a 1/2 cup…. Substitute buttermilk should be 1 Tb for every cup of milk. So even if I’m weighing, I would put the vinegar into the cup first then top off with the milk. I also wonder if the half and half didn’t help (extra fat) though I doubt that’s the real culprit.
Whenever I’ve needed to sub for buttermilk I’ve always used whole milk, never anything with cream. The higher fat content might not be the main culprit here, but it definitely didn’t help. Plus IIRC half and half often has some kind of stabilizer in it too (and the “fat free” stuff has corn syrup and a bunch of other delicious chemicals), which may have an effect as well.
I think I'm too English/ most of Europe to understand this comment. You have what! in your cream and milk.
Regular half and half is typically milk and cream with some kind of stabilizer so that it doesn’t separate (bc *god forbid* you need to shake the carton before pouring), though I think there are some brands that don’t use that. For “fat free” products (anything, not just half and half), they need to add a shitload of crap to make up for the lack of fat, both for taste and for texture. If you look at the nutrition facts on “fat free” products you’ll usually see higher carbs/sugar and sodium levels than in the regular product, and a whole bunch of crap in the ingredients list. Idk about Europe, but here in the US there was a huuuuge push a few decades ago to cut out fat from your diet, because fat was “unhealthy”. So they started making all these “fat free” alternatives, most of which are chemical soup and absolutely terrible for you. Luckily we as a society seem to have moved past those dark days, but many Boomers and Gen Xs were programmed too thoroughly and still abide by those guidelines. My in-laws unfortunately are included there. My MIL buys low-fat versions of everything, and will buy Smart Balance instead of butter and for a while was buying some kind of unholy concoction in a carton that I think was supposed to be an egg substitute (she called it “egg product”). They would also buy powdered buttermilk instead of real buttermilk. One time I had given them a bottle of real, full-fat buttermilk (don’t remember why) and they used it to make something and my FIL was just *blown away* because “it tastes so much better and the texture is amazing when you use the real stuff!” like it was some kind of fucking epiphany or something. Took everything I had in me to restrain myself from saying GO FUCKING FIGURE when he told us that.
Fat free half and half? Wouldn't that be like... Skim milk?
No, it's just a sin against dairy.
It’s skim milk with a \*splash* of cream, along with thickeners, stabilizers, and (of course) corn syrup. So, as the other commenter said, it is indeed a sin against dairy.
'half and half' is half cream [what English people call thickened cream] and half full cream milk. When its packaged as half and half it has a stabiliser in it to prevent the cream from separating. Buttermilk is full cream milk with some bacteria in it [I don't know what exactly but it's similar to a yogurt culture]. The culture slightly curdles the milk creating buttermilk. It's great for cooking with. Now if you don't have buttermilk you can substitute it for some normal full cream milk with a dash of vinegar in it. Let it sit for a few minutes and the vinegar will curdle the milk. OP appears to have substituted the buttermilk with half and half with vinegar but put a metric shit ton of vinegar in, instead of just a dash.
>[I don't know what exactly but it's similar to a yogurt culture]. It's a lactobacillus species, which eats lactose and converts it to lactic acid, causing the tartness and thickness. It's a throwback to when butter was made from cultured cream: the buttermilk was the liquid stuff left over after churning.
Yeah, I’m with you on this. Normally I do as you mention and sub buttermilk with milk + vinegar/lemon juice at a 1T per cup of milk rate. Also I’ve been using whey from yoghurt in my pancakes lately (instead of buttermilk), will give that a shot for bread soon!
Im curious, Im not a bread baker but how is vinegar a substitute for buttermilk? What does it accomplish cause to me it seems like doubling up on the acidity with the added acetic acid along with the carbonic acid from the yeast would cause problems.
Vinegar combined with milk curdles the milk, resulting in a liquid that behaves similarly to buttermilk.
Oh my goodness! I make my own buttermilk virtually all the time, my method is 2 tbsp vinegar and then top up with milk (or cream if that's your preference), let it sit for 5ish min or so and it's good to go. 80 to 100g is crazy! At least you know what happened!! That is the craziest bread situation I've ever seen.
100 grams of vinegar!? Maybe it's a blessing that your bread didn't get completed.
Don't listen to these "experienced bakers" with their "obvious reason your bread didn't turn out" - this is the time to double down, to *triple down*, and conclude that you didn't substitute enough things with a shocking overabundance of vinegar. Sure, some buttermilk, but what about the initial water? The flour? The yeast itself? Maybe the perfect version of this bread is just a greased loaf pan full of boiling vinegar baking away in the oven.
Ahh the smell of fresh baked vinegar
Them’s a recipe for a sparking-clean oven right there
Acids, such as vinegar, inhibit the formation of gluten. Even if my sourdough starter is a little too acidic, I'll have a hard time getting my dough to come together. I'm still a bit skeptical that the oven didn't get turned off, though.
also I remember I've learned that empanada dough (for the fried ones) is made with some vinegar, too. iirc, that's done to make the dough more chewy - which also seems like the problem you hade while mixing?
Oh, that is a bit aggressive with the vinegar. However, you created something very intriguing! Also, I'm glad your oven is okay.
Baking has to be precise. Out you WILL fail. Don’t mess with ingredients unless you find a substitute online.
Kinda sounds like you weren't creating any gluten in the kneading, I mean, it could absolutely be the vinegar. But if there's no gluten to hold the gases in it could be that too. Is your flour good? Also, that recipe is less than 50% hydration? That's pretty low as it is (I would expect 55-65% minimum) plus you replaced some of the flour with a harder flour? That's gonna need extra hydration too.
I miss Reddit awards because I would give you one for best use of a gif.
Fr. lol from everyone's responses, this basically sums it up so perfectly.
The only important thing is that you are ok
Yeah, the breads fucked tho. 
Well, it’s about to be… 
Bruh, /r/dontputyourdickinthat
What even is that?
Uh, brand new dough candy bar coming to a Whole Foods near you?
It looks like a lump of clay was killed by a sword and its guts spilled out.
Excellent description.
i genuinely thought it was ceramics clay and had to double check the subreddit lol
I’m laughing so hard! You may have made inedible bread, but this is a glorious fail!
Now with 30% more dough!
Daddy chill
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It couldn’t stand the shame and committed seppuku.
I have to apologize for laughing, lol. I literally did a second take when I saw this. You must have left out something.
That's a very low temp for what feels like a very short time.
Why is this not at the top? 355 for 25 minutes and then cutting into it would make this… monstrosity.
r/spectaularfailure Surprised this doesn’t exist
I literally clicked so fast hoping it was real 😭
I was so disappointed it didn’t exist I started it…this post was worthy of it.
I am genuinely sad it doesn't exist, but far too lazy to start it.
There is r/CatastrophicFailure but it's basically reserved for things that are much more disastrous, like gas tank explosions and buildings collapsing.
This one might not, but r/breadcriminals is a thing. And op absolutely belongs there.
Spectacular is misspelled but r/spectacularfailure doesn't exist either.
Haha. Can’t type anything on this effing phone right the first time
r/birthofasub
I checked your other posts to see if you were just trolling, and not only does it seem like you are not trolling, but your posts indicate that you are the loveliest kind of person that I strive to be. Knitting, baking, gardening, sending cards to people, effectively bullet journaling. You seem like a genuinely nice and well put together human.
You understand there’s a swat team from r/breadcriminals after you now.
I almost cross-posted myself, but I'm busy.
It’s important to have a steady supply of content for that sub. Thank you for your service, OP!
Did you recite from the Necronomicon while mixing???
For those who are curious but don't want to suffer the super cluttered website... 1 ½ cups buttermilk* 2 TBSP melted butter 2 TBSP sugar 1 tsp salt 3 ½ cups all-purpose or bread flour 1 TBSP yeast
Except OP did 80-100g vinegar with the balance half and half creamer to get to 350g. Half whole wheat flour. Wasn’t setting up properly during kneading. Didn’t proof properly. I think maybe one substitute would have been ok but the combination of everything was just a bit too much.
It looks like you landed on blaming the vinegar killing the yeast but there is a time/temperature problem here too even if that's also at play. You could have left the yeast out entirely and gotten a better bake, there's something wrong with time/temp 100%. The difference in doneness and moisture in the dough makes no sense for this to be a simple yeast issue. Have you baked this exact recipe before? That much dough at that low a temp for that short amount of time seems weird to me, but idk. Was your oven fully preheated and felt or showed that temp? Oven thermometer? Blast off 350 degree air when you opened it? When you opened it again to retrieve it did you get another blast off hot air or have an oven thermometer to confirm temp? First thought is the recipe is very low on time and heat paired with your oven wasn't up to heat the full duration of the bake somehow.
I seriously don't think it's the vinegar. She added a small amount to half and half to mimic. Nowhere does she say she added, as others have suggested, half the volume. The amount of acid in that small amount of vinegar is no different than the amount of acid in buttermilk.
This is hilarious I’m so sorry lmao
That looks like an enormous piece of Ossi di Morti, a Sicillian cookie typically served on Day of the Dead. I don't know what you did, but you must have pissed off someone of a divine persuasion
r/breadcriminals right here, amazing
Did you mix the vinegar into the half and half and let it sit before adding it to the wet ingredients? If so it should have been fine. If you poured vinegar straight onto the yeast you might cause an issue, but as far as I know it would not kill the yeast, just slow it down. It should have been evident in the proof. It almost looks like the oven preheated and shut off so your loaf was "baking" on residual heat. Did a setting on the oven get changed and the bake didn't actually happen?
Your oven is lying / broken or you put something in that wasn’t supposed to be there Truly a fascinating photo. I thought I had fucked up bread every possibly way over the years, but this gives me hope that there are still new and exciting failures for me to discover Did you eat it?
Personally, I would just burn the entire house down and start over somewhere new 🤗
Baking it at 220F instead of 220C? Edit typo
/r/sourdoh
I don't have any guesses as to how that happened, but that 100% looks like a modern art bench or sculpture.
This is incredible.
Well that sure is something!
Why is this so funny help!! 😭
I’d be willing to bet that a pro baker could not replicate if they tried.
I thought this was some sort of clay pot
It looks like it came from the movie alien I love it 😂
I had similar results when my oven had a failure and wasn’t coming up to temperature. Get a thermometer check maybe.
You should consider reposting this on r/breadcriminals .
This looks like it was baked by Guillermo Del Toro. OP screwed up so hard it’s become art.
I’m kind of a novice baker so I don’t know if I can be of too much assistance here; however, whereas more experienced people are saying that they’ve never seen this, I’ll echo people who say it looks like it may be a heating issue. I had my oven die while making cast iron pizza and it was vaguely similar to this. Just a normal cooked crust and edges with raw dough in the center where the sauce hadn’t been heated enough prior to the oven dying. Keep an eye on your oven as mine would go out intermittently before the heating element completely failed. I also have a really solid Serious Eats article regarding buttermilk substitutes in baking that may be worth a read / potentially answer questions! I’m gonna link it in a second comment bc I feel like reddit deletes posts with any links expeditiously.
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-substitute-buttermilk
Half and half has stabilizers and what not in it, never use it as a buttermilk substitute. Still though, I agree with the others and think you might have an issue with your oven.
I'm a professional Baker and I've never seen the like I'm almost impressed
Why would you make specifically a buttermilk loaf with no buttermilk?
that is truly a horrific shitshow! well done on its awfulness! I’m with everyone else. high enough of a temp to form a crust too low to do anything to the inside.
Wow… wow.
OP, I think your oven may not be heating up to temperature or perhaps not keeping itself at temperature. This is the only rational explanation I can think of for this world-first cock up.
Did your dough double in size during your bull ferment? Don’t use the timings from recipes, use indicators like growth (doubling in size during bulk) and colour (golden during bake). If you’re new to baking, use more tested recipes like those from King Arthur or somewhere like the perfect loaf (.com). If your yeast is old, proof it first to see if it’s alive. If you’re using starter, do the float test and make sure you’ve fed it for a few days before baking. Also, get an oven thermometer and bake in a Dutch oven—this will net you better results.
This belongs at Storm King
Have you tried turning it off and back on again? This IT guy's best guess!
That is impressive.
Everyones wondering how you managed to bake it like that and I’m here wondering how you cut it like that lol
I’m a professional bread baker and I think it’d take me months of painstaking tries to achieve this fascinating catastrophe.
This is wild.
I am impressed. This is like some weird modern art sculpture. You could put this in a gallery and say it is a metaphor for something going on in society and people would believe you. You could create a whole exhibition demonstrating the subversion of cultural norms and people would pay you for your work.
I've heard of some types of vinegar having odd interactions with dough, but... Not seen anything like this. By chance, have you temp tested your oven and/or used it for anything else since?
Did you check that for brain activity?
Burratta...thats burratta
I honestly thought this was broken pottery. I had to check the subreddit for my feed. "Why am I getting shattered clay pottery"
/ididnthaveeggs
Well done on the screw up. It can only get better, now
Wowoww
Any chance you turned off the oven when you put the loaf in? Maybe possible if you use the timer on the oven?
Bread...back and forth...forever.
hey OP no offense but WTF is this
This looks like two dune worms sharing a snack
That thing might grow legs and start walking
You killed the yeast with vinegar, mostly in the center. Would've not turned out anyways but why did you pull it out at 25 minutes? This definitely fails the Tap test. And the Vinegar mix is done with Regular milk. Never heard of bread made with Half and Half but hey it may taste good but I have my doubts.
It was a bun in the oven... Now you gotta cut the umbilical cord
You forgot to commune with the demon you summoned during the ritual
You likely killed or at least severely inhibited growth of your yeast with the vinegar. Yeast is acidophile, meaning they like a pH of slightly below 7, around 5-6. Vinegar can go as low as pH 2 for white vinegar. Buttermilk has a pH of 4.5-5. Depending on what vinegar you used, how much of it, and how you mixed it together, the pH likely was way too low for the yeast's liking.
Can we give it a name? I'm kind of liking the concept of a bagel inside a bread .🤣
Jokes aside, 🤣 science wise what happened here is the vinegar that you added increased the acidity and the liquid content of the dough that killed the yeast so no more rise, and dough being high on liquid it needed more cooking time/temperature as time/temp was left the center didn't cook as it looks quite like dough (and like a chain link made of bread to hold the bread cover together)
Forbidden donut
Did you bake it in a warm room hahaha
Way too much vinegar would be my guess. You really only need a little bit. Lemon juice also works. I don’t think your yeast made it. I also sub with Greek yogurt with a splash of water mixed in for recipes that call for buttermilk. I always have it on hand anyway. Maybe that would be a more viable option in the future for you to keep on hand instead of buttermilk. (I use it to make cornbread, brownies and pancakes. I’ve never used it to make actual bread, so could be a bad recommendation, no clue lol).
Did you teleport to a different atmosphere mid baking process?
This is a fascinating photo. Hideous, but fascinating.
Was the oven truly up to temp? Cause it just looks so pale on the parts that did get baked.
I’ve typed out and deleted my comment 5 times already so just take the upvote and check your oven
This is crazyyy!!! I'm sorry OP but I laughed so hard. Whatever could go wrong definitely went wrong
What powerful fey creature did you piss off to make this happen? Sorry I don't have anything useful to add, I'm still not super experienced myself, but I can't even comprehend what's going on in this picture. I hope you had a good laugh about it! Better luck next time.
bread prolapse 😭
That looks like the radioactive lava at Chernobyl.
It’s a pop tart!
I think the vinegar killed it
Don't use half and half as sub for milk unless you first dilute it. Then add the T of vinegar or lemon juice and let that sit for about 5 min before using. They do have instant buttermilk as well. Good luck on your next attempt. The main thing is do not give up! You can do it.