I made the Taylor Swift-inspired Funfetti Sourdough Bread (Pillsbury’s Version)

No one drives pop culture in the 2020s like Taylor Swift. It doesn’t matter if you love her or hate her, Swift’s songs, announcements and even random musings send her fans, social media and even brands into action.

When the singer revealed The Life of a Showgirl, her next album, on Aug. 13, pretty much every brand on social media sprang into action trying to capitalize on the announcement. And when Swift and Travis Kelce broke the news of their engagement, those social media managers had to once again find a way to connect their products to Swift and Kelce.

It took Pillsbury just over a month to take Swift mentioning that she had dabbled in making sourdough bread with Funfetti sprinkles during an episode of New Heights, the podcast hosted by her fiancé and his brother, Jason Kelce, to making an official Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix available to purchase.

(To quickly note, Pillsbury’s Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix is in no way sanctioned by Swift. I’m sure they’d love to have had her endorsement, but as the NFL recently found out, Swift knows her value and doesn’t just do stuff for the exposure.)

This Swift-inspired bread mix was available in an extremely limited quantity, with Pillsbury releasing only 1,500 boxes on the Funfetti website last Wednesday. The product seemed to be a big hit, selling out quickly — once the site finally stopped crashing.

I was able to grab a box of Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix during that limited window. It’s been awhile since I’ve made bread. Was this project a success? Or would I find myself in the tortured bakers department?

What it costs

The Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix was $9.99 during the short period it was available on the Funfetti website.

My thoughts

As I mentioned before, it’s been awhile since I’ve made bread. There was a brief window a few years back — even before the pandemic bread craze — when I decided that making bread was something I wanted to get good at. I was fearless taking on this challenge.

I bought a book. Some bread making tools, including a cozy basket for the bread to proof in. And then I made bread like twice. I’ve never touched any of these items in the five years we’ve lived in our current house, with everything still being wherever it got dumped when we moved from our apartment.

I wasn’t bad at making bread. It’s just something that takes time and patience to do right. I would take the temperature of the kitchen. I would take the temperature of the water. I would take the temperature of the flour.

The Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix didn’t ask for any of that care. Inside the box were two items: The large bag of bread flour mix (complete with sprinkles!) and a packet of instant sourdough yeast/culture. I didn’t expect much more from a box mix.

The thing the Funfetti lobby never wants the average person to realize is that Funfetti is really just a bunch of rainbow sprinkles tossed into whatever it is you’re mixing together. You can see them hiding in the floury bread mix. (There’s definitely a few red sprinkles in there too.)

The instructions for the Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix called for the addition of a cup of warm water. No actual temperature required. No ratio of water temperature versus flour temperature. Just warm water. Like I said, this is a box mix. If I had any higher aspiration for this project, I had to shake it off.

My daughter helped mix the warm water with the dry ingredients. I made sure she stirred everything carefully, knowing that if the bowl tipped over, I was never ever getting everything back together.

The proofing process for the Funfetti Sourdough also felt much less precise than I remember from my previous bread making experiences. After the dough rose for an hour, it went into the oven for a two-part baking process.

The bread probably could’ve spent a minute or two less in the oven, but the outside texture of the Funfetti Sourdough loaf seemed good. The inside was a bit denser than it should’ve been, which I’m going to blame on either the proofing time or the generic yeast/sourdough mix used for this bread. (Paul Hollywood would absolutely have bad blood with the crumb structure on my Funfetti Sourdough bread if I presented it to him on the Great British Bake Off.)

The question of how the Funfetti Sourdough Bread tastes seems besides the point in this entire endeavor. Pillsbury didn’t release this bread mix to be enjoyed. It released it to capitalize on the popularity of Taylor Swift and have her fans post pictures of it on social media — which I’m absolutely going to do after this Snackology review goes live.

But it’s not bad? The sourdough vibes of this bread were strong from the very beginning when I opened up that packet of starter. This bread is very much sourdough ... but with the added sweetness you’d get from dumping a bunch of sprinkles into any loaf of bread.

“I generally don’t like the Funfetti flavor … in a bread,” my wife commented after trying a piece of the cooled Funfetti Sourdough Bread.

Snack score

🍪🍪🍪 (3 out of 5 cookies)

Was I a lover of Funfetti Sourdough? Does it have style? Did it make my wildest dreams come true? (Oh no, I’m running out of time to drop more Taylor Swift song titles. Cardigan! 22! Christmas Tree Farm!) I’m going to finish the loaf I made, but even if Funfetti Sourdough Bread Mix was something regularly stocked in stores, it’s not something that I would pick up again.

Phew. Is it over now?