The artisanal bakery Lunar Crust in Berlin has unveiled what may be the most ambitious intersection of astrophysics and sourdough since Galileo sketched sunspots on a bread napkin. Their new exhibition, Starmap Scorched: The Crackled Cosmos of High-Temperature Baking, transforms the humble act of bread-making into a cosmological event where flour dust becomes stardust and blistering oven springs mimic supernovae.

At the heart of the project lies an antique brick oven retrofitted with thermal imaging cameras and quartz windows, allowing bakers to document the precise moment when 850°F heat collides with hydrated dough. What emerges resembles less a traditional loaf and more a tactile star chart—explosive "ears" mirroring supermassive black hole jets, irregular craters echoing lunar mare, and the signature "star cracks" that give the exhibition its name. These fissures, formed through controlled steam bursts and rapid temperature drops, recreate the fractal patterns seen in Martian ice sheets and Jupiter's atmospheric turbulence.

Head baker Elisa Voigt, formerly a materials scientist studying ceramic fractures in spacecraft shielding, applies her knowledge of "crack propagation physics" to dough. "Gluten networks fail in predictable yet beautiful ways under stress," she explains, kneading a batch of dough mixed with activated charcoal and edible gold leaf. "The same equations that describe how tectonic plates shift can predict where this batard will split—we're just baking with the equations written in steam instead of ink."

Visitors to the pop-up gallery encounter loaves displayed like celestial artifacts in humidity-controlled vitrines, each paired with astronomical photographs showing uncanny visual parallels. A rye-walnut boule sits beside the Veil Nebula's filamentary structure; a ciabatta's open crumb mirrors the sponge-like topology of asteroid 25143 Itokawa. The centerpiece—a three-foot-wide "comet loaf" with a trailing "tail" of caramelized sugars—hangs suspended beneath a projection of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

The project has drawn unexpected attention from scientific communities. Dr. Hiroto Matsukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) noted in a recent symposium that bread's protein matrix behaves remarkably like cosmic dust aggregates in protoplanetary disks. "Both systems self-organize through competing forces of adhesion and fragmentation," he wrote. "Perhaps future rovers could use baguettes as impact sensors."

Nightly "bread telescope" sessions invite attendees to examine cross-sections under polarized light, revealing hidden starch galaxies and yeast nebulas. The bakery has even developed a "spectral loaf" where different grains—purple barley, blue corn, red quinoa—create wavelength-like stratification when sliced. As Voigt remarks while unloading a particularly volcanic-looking miche: "Every baker knows dough is alive, but we've forgotten it's also a universe."

Critics argue the project leans too heavily on visual metaphor without deeper scientific rigor, though none deny its visceral impact. When the oven door opens to reveal a fresh batch of crackle-glazed "moon rocks," the collective gasp from spectators suggests that, at minimum, Lunar Crust has reenchanted the simple act of breaking bread—turning each torn crust into a Big Bang moment.

The exhibition coincides with the bakery's launch of limited-edition "constellation croissants," their laminated layers deliberately split to form Orion's Belt and Ursa Major patterns. Early morning queues now form not just for the pastries, but for what regulars call "the 6:15am supernova"—the moment when sunrise hits the oven's observation window, backlighting rising loaves like solar prominences.

As astrophysicists and food anthropologists debate whether this represents a new "astro-gastronomy" movement or merely clever marketing, Voigt's team prepares their next act: bread baked using infrared spectra data from the James Webb Space Telescope. "If we can taste terroir," she muses, "why not taste the chemical composition of the Carina Nebula?" The oven, it seems, has become their rocket ship.