"Maybe we can leave it under a park bench for her."
That was my Plan B for delivering a loaf of SAVEUR's ultra-fluffy milk bread to the famously secretive woman behind @breadfaceblog, an Instagram account that, in its own words, "gives the people something they didn't ask for." Namely, videos shot like modern art installations of someone squishing their face into various loaves of bread. Strong music choices accompany. She has good taste in outfits. There's a lot of brand shoutouts, because hey, Instagram. To date, she's accumulated nearly 170,000 followers and racks up five-figure view counts. But first and foremost: there's the idea and practice of breadfacing, an activity that walks the aesthetic line between high art and primal desire.
SAVEUR's editors are all obsessed with @breadfaceblog. We happily handed her a Blog Award for Best Instagram last year. We love her mix of hyper-designed art project with the most basic of food urges. We're in awe of how so simple and weird yet utterly perfect it is. So when she actually agreed to come into the office (Plan A) to pick up some loaves and breadface with us live, well, we were floored.
We also had questions. Here is what we learned.
This isn't new. For Bread Face, her public alias, breadfacing didn't begin with the Instagram account. It was a personal pastime because hey, why not? (If you've ever cradled a pillowy loaf of bread still warm from the oven, surely you understand.) When friends found out she did it, she found the encouragement to go public. #breadfacing is now officially a thing.
It feels amazing. Really. Start with something soft, like storebought white bread, and smoosh your way into its crumb. The spongy give and delicate porosity acts a lot like a foam cushion that's also an exfoliating treatment. After breadfacing, our faces felt clean and refreshed, soft and smooth as freshly kneaded balls of dough.
Tall is good. An adult human head weighs around 10 pounds. Add in the moderate force of pushing your face into a loaf and you need a surprisingly thick cushion to keep your nose from planting into the table. Go with a taller stack of bread or thicker loaf than you think you need.
Natural light is the enemy. "I don't like natural light," Bread Face told me. And after watching her poke around the SAVEUR office for a filming location, I can see why. Bright, airy light makes for nice photos, but sucks away all the private, intimate feelings that @breadfaceblog capitalizes on so well. Think LEDs, not golden hour.
Her most requested bread to breadface is Twinkies. She won't do it. Stop being gross.
