This Houston woman didn’t really bake bread in her mailbox

Although summer heat records are breaking across the U.S., it’s not quite hot enough to use a mailbox as an oven.

But a photo showing a woman pulling a loaf of baked bread out of a brick mailbox says it is. "It’s this hot in Texas," read a caption on the image shared on Facebook June 24. "Roberta Wright, who lives in a suburb of Houston, baked bread in her mailbox. It only took 45 minutes!"

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The photo is real. Wright, a children’s book author, said in a 2023 interview with Houston’s KTRK-TV that she first shared the image on social media out of fun. But asked if she actually cooked it in the mailbox, she said, "It's not exactly what happened. It's the storytelling of your imagination."  

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She baked the bread in a conventional oven before placing it into her mailbox. Wright said because of the hot summer weather, she had to use oven mitts to touch her mailbox, which piqued her curiosity. And so she posted the photo to "inspire kids to use their imagination."

Houston temperatures were around 110 degrees Fahrenheit in July 2023 on the weekend Wright posted the photo, according to news reports. However, the recommended temperature to bake an average loaf of bread is 350 F. And the brick on the mailbox actually cools the mailbox’s interior by absorbing heat, so the mailbox was not nearly hot enough to bake the bread.  

We rate the claim that this photo shows a Houston woman baking bread in her mailbox False.