45 minutes of whisking and a sprained wrist later…
( Hannah Engel / Rowdy Magazine Online Writer)
Bread. I love bread. I can eat for every meal of the day, but unfortunately, my body would hate me. So you could only imagine my excitement as I happened upon the most beautiful, fluffy bread while scrolling through TikTok one night (shocker). This wasn’t some basic artesian quarantine bread. Oh, no. This was ~ Cloud Bread ~
When I stumbled across this fairyland bread, I thought, I need to try this. I searched up the ingredients, drove to the local Publix, and got baking right away.
When I started this journey into the baking world, I assumed that making this bread was gonna be easy as cake, I mean, its only three ingredients: egg whites, sugar, and cornstarch. You’re basically just making meringue.
But things didn’t take long to go wrong.
After adding all three ingredients and dropping some sprinkles of pink food coloring into a mixing bowl, I realized I didn’t own a mixer. Now, a normal person would just ask their friends for one, but I was baking this at 11:30 at night.
In turn, I grabbed the frother that I use to make my oat milk lattes. This, as you could imagine was not working out, so I tried whisking and whisking and whisking. Nothing was happening (except maybe my wrist bruising). No matter what I did, it still looked like a pink pool of what looked like Pepto Bismol.
I tried to add more cornstarch in to see if that helped. And it did… a little bit. After physically sweating from whisking for a while I just decided to add in as much cornstarch as needed to achieve peak fluffiness.
At this point, I wasn’t going for taste, I was going for “I need this cloud bread to look good for pictures.” Don’t believe what you see on the internet kids.
One hour of whisking and one Taco Bell-break later, the batter was close enough. I flopped the whipped Pepto Bismol into a loaf pan and prayed that my apartment didn’t catch on fire.
Thirty minutes passed and it was time to take the bread out of the oven.
But just from looking at this uncut bread, I lost all hope. It looked like a burnt sponge.
I let it cool and before cracking the baby open, and what I saw was shocking.
I actually did it... kind of. The texture was an A+ from my perspective but maybe I’m just giving myself too much credit. The taste and presentation, however, very interesting… Not exactly a steal from Olive Garden, stuff it in your purse kind of reaction.
(Hannah Engel / Rowdy Magazine Cloud Bread)
Even though this cloud bread was a complete disaster, I wasn’t completely devasted. It was a funny experience and now I can look back on this and say I at least tried to make cloud bread.
Gordon Ramsey, on the other hand, would probably put two pieces of bread on either side of my head and send me directly to hell.
Hannah Engel is an Online Writer at Rowdy Magazine. Her simple pleasures include playing Animal Crossing, online shopping, and taking care of her plants. She’s passionate about fashion and travel. You can find her on Instagram @hannah__engel.