It looks like one of nature’s greatest puzzles is destined to remain shrouded in mystery and confusion. Researchers at Oxford have concluded that they’ll never know how Outback Steakhouse bread can be so dark brown but taste regular.
If you were hoping for a definitive explanation of how that bread manages to look like a big slab of wood but still taste like normal bread from the supermarket, we’re sorry. Looks like you’ll just have to continue biting into Outback bread and being surprised at how regular it tastes considering how dark brown it is forever.
“Despite the great effort and resources we’ve put into understanding the incongruity between the abnormally dark color of Outback bread and its regular taste, decades of research have forced us to conclude that we will never find an adequate explanation,” said lead researcher Dr. Lawrence Knowles of Oxford’s department of chemistry. “Perhaps we will return to this riddle of the universe at some point in the future, when our technology and insight into the bread’s brownness in relation to its ordinary taste have developed further.”
While it’s disappointing that scientists have yet to find a sufficient answer, the puzzle of Outback’s bread remains a beautiful mystery, destined to capture the imagination of humankind for generations to come. For now, it looks like we must move on and allow the question of how Outback’s complimentary bread can be so extremely dark brown but still have a regular taste to remain open—an unexplained marvel of the world, and a constant reminder of just how much about our universe we have yet to understand.
