My Coworker Thinks I'm Rude Because I Won't Eat His "Immortal Bread"

Sometimes, food brings people together. Other times, it becomes the reason you question everything—including your coworker's sanity. One Reddit user shared a story that’s less about bread and more about boundaries, communication, and what happens when one person’s passion project becomes another person’s daily horror. Here's what happened when they refused to eat what they now call... the “immortal bread.”

Their coworker offered them very strange bread.

I work in an office with a pretty chill team, but there’s one coworker, Jeff, who’s… a little strange. Everyone's got that coworker, right? He’s super into old-world traditions, obscure history, and—apparently—baking bread that never dies.

Last week, my strange coworker brought in a loaf of bread and said it was a “very special recipe”. He was offering slices to everyone. I took a piece, but he stopped me and said, “Before you eat, you need to understand what you’re consuming.”

Okay. Weird. But I played along.

He then told me that this bread was made using a 600-year-old sourdough starter. It's been kept alive through generations of his family. Apparently, whoever eats it will “carry the spirit of the bread forward”—and that, technically, no one who has ever eaten it has truly “left this world.”

I awkwardly laughed and asked if he meant, like, metaphorically.

No. He meant literally.

This wasn’t an ordinary sourdough.

Jeff went into this long explanation about how the yeast in the bread is an eternal entity that has “absorbed the energies of all who have eaten it.” According to him, when I eat a slice, I’d be spiritually connected to every single person who has ever consumed this bread across time.

I was like, dude, what?!

At this point, a few other coworkers had also hesitated mid-bite. Sensing the skepticism, Jeff got really intense. He whispered to me, “There are echoes of the past in every bite. You don’t eat the bread—the bread eats you.”

I noped right out of there and put my slice back. Jeff looked deeply offended and said I was “rejecting a powerful gift.” Later, he sent me a long email about how I “disrespected the legacy” of his family’s sacred bread and that I was “closing myself off to something greater.”

Now a few coworkers are saying I was rude and that it was just “a harmless old family tradition.” But like?? If someone tells me their bread is sentient with ancient soul energy, I feel like I have a right to not eat it??

Most people agreed with the poster.

• He's likely full of it. 600 years would put it as the 2nd or 3rd oldest sourdough starter on the planet. The only two I found around that were resurrected from yeast in Egypt and preserved from Germany.
  It could be a few generations old and something his family is proud of... but that's not 600 years and the dude is a few nuts short of a jar of Jif. Either way, after that sales pitch, I wouldn't be touching anything he brought to the potluck. © Sleepwalker0304 / Reddit
• Is that even possible? I don't cook beyond survival, so I'm kind of fascinated. So basically the dough has been around for 6 centuries and presumably handled by 600 years of hands and germs?! No. Just no.
  People only discovered germs in the last 150 years!! If this is true, then there are probably toilet germs in that stuff from the 1400s. © 74Magick / Reddit
• Definitely a way to keep one's colleagues from stealing one's sandwiches from the lunchroom. © Talwar3000 / Reddit
• Jeff is acting like a weirdo at work. He can expect to put people off with his bizarre stories. Also, I think he's either lying or naive to think that the sourdough starter has never been allowed to die over six hundred years. That's crazy. © Regular_Boot_3540 / Reddit

But one did not.

• This is silly. There’s lots of people with sourdough starters and constantly make bread with them. I personally couldn’t keep mine alive and the person who gave some to me had kept theirs for 10 years, and they got it from someone else.
  It’s silly to refuse food because you don’t understand how baking works. The dude was joking with you, or really believes that these starters are that old and magical. Either way, it’s just bread, and you let some fake stuff he may or may not believe in get to you and put back food you had already touched. © Jmfroggie / Reddit

We’ve all had our kitchen fails — from burnt toast to questionable casseroles — but some culinary creations leave a mark (and not always in a good way). Hopefully, this immortal bread saga ends with fresher loaves and clearer coworking boundaries. And if you’re in the mood for some baking that’ll lift your spirits instead of haunting your fridge, check out these 20 amateur bakers whose creations can make you smile and drool.