What?! Woman in coach seat makes sourdough bread from scratch on long-haul flight

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I completely understand people trying to find new ways to pass the time on an airplane. I’ve written plenty of posts on how to do just that. I also understand that many people will do just about anything for attention and this stunt certainly garnered plenty of it.

Woman records herself making sourdough bread in-flight. Maria Baradell, who, according to her bio, lives in Dallas, Texas but is from Caracas, Venezuela, is a mother of five, a content creator and from her Instagram profile, you can see that she makes and sells delicious looking bread. But what she made in a recent video does not look delicious in the slightest. While aboard a long-haul flight to Spain, she made sourdough bread for her sister. Why is anyone’s guess.

The video (embedded below) shows her mixing and kneading the dough and pans across the plane’s window, presumably to prove that she really is on an airplane. Her caption reads: “making sourdough bread in my flight to Spain. I want to surprise my sister with a fresh loaf of bread.”

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A post shared by Maria Baradell (@leafandloafco)

Maria records herself making the bread step by step, adding bottled water to a mixing bowl, then the starter, which she stirs in with a spatula. Next, she opens a Ziploc bag of flour, which she adds along with salt and kneads, stretches and folds the dough periodically throughout the flight. Then she sleeps during “bulk fermentation” and you can see from the window that it’s nighttime as she and her dough fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Maria does all of this in a window seat in coach so it wasn’t like she had a lot of space or privacy. The comments say it all but if someone brought me a ball of dough they’d prepared in-flight, I would probably throw it at them.

Here are what some of the most popular comments had to say about Maria’s little stunt:

@lilahali_: I’m a flight attendant and I hate people like you

@eza.belle: As a flight attendant I’m gonna say: Ewwwww. On the last flight, some unhygienic passenger clipped his toe nails on that table and another one puked on it. Needless to say that the armrest you’re touching, is where some dudes’ unwashed hands from the lavatory were as well. Another woman changed the baby’s diaper, since the bathroom wasn’t “sanitary” enough in her opinion. I’ve seen it all- believe me. Now there’s you, kneading and folding sourdough. Enjoy your germ-bread. That’s an airplane- not a bakery. Learn some manners, people.. please 🙏🏻

@mia.m.7: This is inconsiderate for all the people on the plane allergic to wheat and/or gluten. 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.

@brianamariefonte: Imagine you settle into your seat and the person next to sets up a camera and starts taking out bowls, ingredients, and making bread 🪦

@derylnea: 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. I know there is HEPA in the plane but is not instantaneous, so please avoid to do it in closed public places if you can not want to ruin some days of someone holidays ❤️

After her post went viral and she was slammed for doing this, Maria posted a follow-up video, which you can watch below. In the post, she says she 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.” Pasta?! What in the gluten is going on?