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Food

Odd Bread

Welcome back to Hot Links, our food column dedicated to showcasing the overlooked culinary wonders of YouTube. This is our most gluten-ous entry yet! Ha ha ha ha.
Photo by Flickr user Abri le Roux

Welcome back to our food column, Hot Links, where VICE employee Dan Meyer explores the neglected culinary stars of YouTube. Each week, Dan presents a selection of videos highlighting specific food themes, from amateur cooking to local restaurant commercials, elderly drinking buddies, kitchen disasters, all culled from the infinite supply of odd YouTube wonders. We encourage you to fall into this culinary video K-hole, and include your own comments and contributions below.

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Considering that bread has been around for almost 30,000 years, I wanted to wrangle up the internet's weirdest bread options, prepared by the strangest people that the Western world has ever seen. One can't overlook the newer YouTube settings feature, which allows you to change the speed of each video to make you wonder if you've been drinking sizzurp. I highly recommend taking advantage of this new tool while watching the videos below. And for all of those gluten-free people out there, my apologies in advance.

The Best Fry Bread

We have a very comfortable lo-fi aesthetic, and our host's delivery and cadence sounds a bit chopped and screwed. She's like Julia Child on lean. It is evident that this is a college film-school project because the subject is using brand new cooking tools and ingredients. I'm not sure if the background music is happening right outside of the window, or if it got laid in during the editing process. Stay tuned for the credits, where you will see what I consider to be one of the best names of all time: Alfonso Clement Roman, III.

Hudson Bay Bread

This is the kind of cooking video that falls into the "headless" category. Our host, Woody, is a man dedicated to the art of Bushcraft—a wilderness club that teaches people how to build fires, primitive weapons, and lean-tos in order to prepare them for an apocalypse. He's decided to teach us how to make Hudson Bay bread, a survival food that is high in calories and has a very long shelf life. Woody veers away from the original recipe by using real vanilla extract instead of maple flavoring because he "does not play in this house." And yes, he is a citizen of middle American who is wearing a kilt while simultaneously filming himself from the neck down. He mentions in the video comments section that he "wears a kilt outside of the house about 90 percent of the time."

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French Bread – White Trash Cooking

Our host, Dennis, looks like a Smith College philosophy professor who is a bread hobbyist on the weekends. According to his introduction, he explains that he is a white trash chef who lives in a mobile home in a trailer park. His working area looks very inspired by Julia Child's TV set kitchen. One of the important steps to making bread, according to Dennis, is "to get my yeast all hot and bothered so that it will reproduce." By the 26 minute mark, you can watch Dennis taste test his freshly baked bread with the sound of sirens going off in the background. The cops are coming, but he doesn't care, because this homemade bread is fantastic.

Coffee Can Great Part One

YouTube user "heartlandcontrystor" made a two-part video series on bread that is baked in one-pound coffee cans. I personally don't think that it's wise to bake raw dough in a tall, low-grade metal cylinder due to the risk of toxicity leaching into the dough in a hot oven, but James Beard has done it, so I'm probably wrong. You will have to make it three and a half minutes in before you're looking at anything other than three empty tin cans on a countertop, but eventually, our anonymous host gets around to using the yard work glove that has been sitting on the counter to sand down her own personal set of cans. Then it gets really good.

The Most Insane Bread Commercial You'll Ever See

This video tamely begins with a woman in a heavy coat selling "whole-grain brown bread." Then things take a turn as we're treated to the vision of a close-up of an 80s hardbody in a crop top. It looks like a sexy lady until the camera pans up and—bam, another turn! It's a dude who looks like Patrick Swayze's characters in Point Break and Dirty Dancing were merged into a baker/male escort combon who can turn up the heat in more ways than one. (One: he can turn up the oven heat. Two: He can turn up the sexual heat with his hot body.) I'm certain that putting a cup of milk on his head and suggestively cutting a loaf of bread are both serious health code violations, but I commend his enthusiasm. When the commercial cuts back to the lady host, we must wipe the sweat off of our brows and go about finding some brown bread.

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How to Make No-Knead Sourdough Rye Bread, Part One

Kathy begins this video by apologizing for the numerous errors she has encountered while cooking this no-knead sourdough rye bread. She goes on to apologize for how bad she and her husband are at making videos. Once the insecure diatribe ends, she begins making this truly unremarkable bread. I'm including this video as an investigation into someone who is struggling with her self esteem but feels the need to host her own cooking videos. Kathy, if you are reading this, we are not making fun of you. We love you.

Seitenbacher Farmer Bread Mix

If Stepford Wives was made into a German cooking show, you'd be witnessing the first installment right here. This bread does not look particularly desirable because it uh… comes from a series of packets. The lady doesn't know how much water she used, so she recommends that you consult the machine's instructions. You can't say the word Seitenbacher without saying the word Satan. COINCIDENCE?!?!?!! Teach the controversy, everyone.