It’s back to basics for The Great British Baking Show’s tantalizing “Pastry Week”

In some episodes of The
Great British Baking Show, the producers push the bakers, presenting
complicated and obscure challenge briefs. Some episodes, they play it safe,
teeing the contestants up for success. For season 11’s “Pastry Week” however,
the producers seem less interested in the bakers’ experience and more focused
on the audience’s. Between the savory signature, accessible technical, and
tempting showstopper, this episode’s challenges make for the most tantalizing
viewing of the season so far.

The signature challenge is straightforward enough. The
bakers must make their version of the pasty, a savory filling with a pastry
shell that’s been crimped closed and baked. They’ll have two hours to make
eight identical pasties, each 15 centimeters long and featuring some form of
decorative finish. The pasties can be any shape and use any type of
pastry. A good pasty is a beautiful thing, a convenient and filling lunch staple.
They’re also a great choice for the signature round, with plenty of opportunity
for personalization and creativity. The very first series featured Cornish
pasties as the pastry technical and series nine, or collection six on Netflix,
featured a samosa challenge. However this is such a universal bake that there’s
plenty of space for another round of pasty making, particularly with a set of
bakers this creative and specific with their flavors.

The judges have surprisingly clear expectations for this
round. They want crisp, buttery pastry and a delicious filling. That’s it. As
long as the pasties aren’t too dry or too wet and they feature crimping, the
judges will be happy. Half of the bakers—Laura, Linda, Lottie, and Peter—opt
for rough puff pastry, a flaky pastry that approximates puff pastry in less
time. Most of the others—Mark, Marc, and Dave—go with shortcrust pastry, which
is more crumbly than rough puff. Hermine decides to make her own mix of rough
puff and shortcrust, hoping for the best of both worlds for her Moroccan tagine
pasties, featuring preserved lemon, raisins, chickpeas, and Moroccan spiced
lamb.

Team rough puff goes more or less traditional with their
flavors. Laura is making cheddar and onion pasties, with thyme, leeks, cream,
and Dijon mustard. Lottie is adapting toad in the hole, a hearty English dish,
with mashed potato, onion, sage and fennel gravy, and Lincolnshire sausage.
Prue is worried it’ll come out stodgy, but both Paul and Noel practically
salivate at her description and think it sounds delicious. Peter goes with
another favorite, kedgeree. His pasties will be shaped like haddock and feature
smoked haddock, kedgeree rice, petit pois, and boiled eggs. Amping up the spice
even more is Linda, who takes inspiration from samosas for her pasties, with a spiced
chicken thigh, coriander, and diced potato filling. She’s planning to decorate
her samosa-shaped pasties with a stenciled karma symbol, using poppy seeds.

Team shortcrust is just as focused on their flavors as the
rough puffers. Mark is spicing his pastry and using an aloo gobi and paneer
filling, roasted cauliflower and cheese curry. Davie is looking to Thai cuisine
for his flavors, with spiced chicken breast, jasmine rice, and a sweet chili
dipping sauce, which he’ll pair with chili decorations. Marc, who hails from
Cornwall, is staying close to home with monkfish, asparagus, samphire, and
creamy lemon sauce pasties. Pasties are the official dish of Cornwall, so he’s
feeling the pressure to deliver. Marc will be using pleated crimps, but when
pressed by Paul, he’s unsure just how many pleats he’ll need—Paul shares during
judging that 20 or 21 is the standard—adding even more stress to the proceedings.

The clock ticks down as the bakers decide how much filling
to use, how many crimps to deploy, and just how long each element of their bake
needs to rest between steps. Before long, their two hours are up, and it’s time
for judging. Paul and Prue start with Marc, ripping off the Band-Aid. His
under-pleated pasties have good pastry, but could use more color and are bone
dry. He needed more cream. Peter’s bake gets a similar reception. He’s praised
for the look of his haddock pasties and they have a good flavor, but they’re
also dry. Prue was worried that Lottie’s bakes would be stodgy, but she gets
the first raves of the round, with Prue admitting she was wrong. Paul continues
his multi-episode critique of Lottie’s presentation, but he acknowledges her
toad in the hole pasties taste amazing. Dave has the opposite issue. His chili
pasties look impressive, but they’re lacking in flavor, at least until Prue
uses the dipping sauce, which she compliments. Paul seems not to try the sauce
at all, which must have been a blow, as Dave had calibrated his flavors expecting
them to be eaten together.

Mark gets the second rave of the signature round with his
aloo gobi pasties, Prue praising his pastry as “heaven” and Paul focusing on
his delicious flavors and textures. Hermine does well too, her Moroccan lamb
pasties earning a “thank you very much indeed” from Paul and a “really
delicious” from Prue. Had she gotten another couple of minutes in on the bake,
to help with the color, she may have earned a Paul Hollywood Handshake. Linda
is dinged a bit for her samosa-shaped pasties, having missed the line in the
brief requiring crimps. However, Paul thinks the flavors are fantastic and
loves the contrast of the samosa filling with her buttery rough puff, and Prue declares
it a delicious lunch. Last is Laura, who like Hermine seems to just miss on a
Paul Hollywood Handshake. Her pasties are a bit irregular in size, but Prue
loves their flavor and moisture, calling them “heaven” and Paul compliments her
texture, flavors, and blend of ingredients. All things considered, it’s a
triumphant round for the bakers, and one that must come as a boost after last
episode’s brownies.

It’s time for the technical round. Lottie, who would like to
not be on the bottom again, thank you very much, rightly worries at the range
of possibilities. In past seasons, the judges have chosen everything from
British classics to obscure pastries the bakers were completely unfamiliar
with. This season, Prue is generous. She asks for three raspberry and three
salted caramel éclairs. Not too bad, right? However, each éclair is highly
decorated and the brief specifies that the judges will be looking for precision
and perfect piping, and the bakers only have two hours and 15 minutes. That’s
plenty of time if everything goes well. It’s not, if they run into trouble.

As with the signature brief, éclairs are nothing new to Bake Off. Mark, Dave, and Laura walk the
audience through the steps of making a choux paste or dough and their clear
instructions help the viewers immediately identify trouble on the horizon for
Linda, whose dough is much too wet. Linda knows her dough isn’t right, but can’t
remember quite how to fix it, or what went wrong. As she struggles, everyone
moves on to their crème pâtissière, or crème pât. Here’s where the real trouble
begins. While some of the bakers’ pastry creams look alright, many are grainy
and Lottie’s looks like scrambled eggs. Considering the crème pât is the base
for both éclair fillings, if they can’t save their cream, they’re unlikely to
nail either flavor of éclair. As the bakers contend with this, the éclairs
finish baking. Marc and Linda are met with thin, unrisen choux and while Marc
continues on, Linda decides to start over, binning her éclairs and returning to
the start of the recipe. As she dives back in, the bulk of the bakers are on to
the next step, the caramel. Mark and Hermine run into trouble here, Hermine’s
caramel taking forever and Mark’s appearing grainy.

The bakers contend with their caramels, gauging the color
and texture, while Matt asks Linda, “Do you want me to go to the supermarket
and buy some éclairs?” to which she replies, “I think you better.” That’s
right, her second batch of choux is no better than her first and rather than
jump back to the rest of the recipe, she falls prey to the sunk cost fallacy
and starts over a third time. As the bakers assemble their éclairs, it’s clear that
they, as a group, needed clearer instructions. Most of their crème pâts are too
thin, and Lottie’s splits. There’s nothing to be done. There isn’t enough time
to redo anything, so they set to filling their choux with the underwhelming crème
and topping them with icing. Thankfully, Linda’s third set of choux works
better than her first two, but with no time left, she places her unadorned choux
on her tray with bowls of raspberry jam and pastry cream, a shoo-in for last
place.

When a handful of bakers struggle on a technical, or even up
to half of the cast, that’s an indication of which bakers’ experience and
instincts helped them succeed on a tricky bake. When the entire tent struggles
and presents bakes they know are off, it’s a sign that the instructions or
parameters of the challenge were flawed. As expected, Linda is last. Marc’s
deflated choux put him in seventh, while Laura’s flavorful, but under-baked
pastry and bad textures put her in sixth. Dave’s runny crème pât puts him in
fifth, Lottie’s neat éclairs and set cream put her in fourth, and Mark’s okay
caramel bump him to third, despite under-filling his choux. The stunning praise
of “they look like éclairs” and “not bad” puts Hermine in second, and Peter is
the only baker to really achieve the technical brief, giving him his first
technical win. After the high of the signature round, the technical judging is
quite a blow.

The next day, bakers head into the tent for the showstopper.
The bakers will have three hours and 45 minutes to make a beautiful and delicious
sweet tart—a standard pastry week challenge—and to raise the difficulty, they
must also make a self-supporting, intricately latticed pastry cage to go over
it. There are no other restrictions on either the tart or the cage, but they
must look and taste superb. As the bakers set to work, they speak for the
audience, Marc saying, “Why would you make a caged tart?” and Hermine, “It’s
bonkers. [The tart] looks beautiful, you’re supposed to showcase it, not cage
it.” As quickly becomes clear, the answer is because just making a tart is too
easy, and Paul and Prue expect more from the bakers.

Lottie has perhaps the most controversial bake of the round.
Rather than a traditional tart, she’s layering pastry with layers of apple
puree, caramelized apple, raw apple, and boozy apple slices with toffee popcorn
crème diplomat. Her cage will be made of carefully piped choux pastry, held in
a pyramid by isomalt. Paul is unconvinced of whether her dessert qualifies as a
tart, and Lottie’s attempt to use the root definition of “tart” does nothing to
move him. The other baker using a pyramid-shaped cage is Dave, who is taking
inspiration from the Louvre. He’s making a mango and lime tart with decorative
mango slices, citrus tequila filling, and a cocoa and sweet pastry base for
both his tart shell and pyramid. He’ll be binding his pyramid with caramel.

Hermine also chooses an unusual cage. She’s opting for a box
for her lime confit and lemon meringue tart. Her tart will have lime jelly, Italian
meringue, lemon curd macarons, white sugar pearls, and fresh fruit, with an
ornate heart-shaped design for her cage. Rather than a cage, Mark decides to
use some wordplay for his mes-“sage” in a bottle bake. He’s using rough puff to
make a pastry wine bottle, which he’s cut holes out of. He’ll place his bottle
over his pear and sage tart, with a ginger sweet pastry base, ginger crème pât,
pear jam, and pear and sage mousse, with crumbled shortbread biscuits for his
sand.

The rest of the bakers are making domes for their cages.
Laura wants to conjure the image of a garden for her key lime tart, with ginger
pastry, Italian meringue, fresh fruit, edible flowers, and rose garden
decorations on her puff pastry dome. Peter is going more abstract with his
freeform shortcrust pastry cage, which he’ll decorate with edible flowers and
place over his candied lemon, caramelized hazelnut, tart lemon filling, and blackberry
curd tart. Linda’s gypsy tart will feature chocolate filigree, a coffee and
brandy-soaked sponge, and the traditional sugar and evaporated milk filling
over a sweet pastry base, with a vanilla and rosewater pastry dome, while Marc
has chosen a sablé Breton base for his chocolate crémeux, chocolate and sesame tuile,
glazed blackberry, blackberry jam, and caramelized apple tart with a puff
pastry cage, decorated with shortcrust flowers and vine leaves.

Overall, the round seems to go well for the bakers. Their
tarts all sound delicious and they have clear plans for how they’re approaching
their cages. The moment of tension comes when it’s time to assemble them, for
the pyramid and box bakers, or unmold them, for Mark and the dome makers. Each
baker holds their breath and fortunately, most manage the process smoothly.
Linda and Mark aren’t so lucky. Linda’s strips of pastry cling to the bowl she
baked her colorful cage on and Mark’s bottle splits in half as he attempts to
remove it from his foil-covered mold. It’s quite a blow after their painstaking
work, and among this group of bakers, such a significant problem with their
cage immediately places them in danger of elimination.

Judging kicks off with Dave, who gets high marks for his
striking pyramid and beautiful, bright mango tart. Marc makes up some ground
after his poor technical with his lovely cage and rich chocolate crémeux, even
if Paul would have liked a different shell. Hermine’s box breaks apart as Paul
goes to lift it, but Prue compliments its design and both judges like the
lovely flavors of her delicate tart. Laura knocks her lime tart—a favorite of
both Paul and Matt—out of the park, giving plenty of zing and flavor to the
tart and presenting a beautifully latticed dome.

Things take a turn with Linda, whose tart is complemented
for its flavors, but which is nowhere near the other bakes in terms of
presentation. Lottie’s choux pyramid is stunning, but despite her careful
piping, Prue finds her dessert to look a right mess and while both judges like
her flavors, Paul remains adamant that her bake isn’t really a tart. Peter’s
dome is read for being a bit thick, but Paul dubs his bake a “happy tart” as
the flavors hit in the back of the cheeks and prompt a smile from the eater,
and both Paul and Prue compliment his bake. Last is Mark, who Paul is
disappointed in, saying this showstopper is not up to Mark’s recent standard.
Prue is more on board, appreciating the tart’s unusual flavor, but he could be
in trouble.

Given the poor feedback, Mark is worried, and Linda knows
she’s likely going home, though she acknowledges the critiques are fair. Peter
is chuffed, glad Paul appreciated his flavors, and Hermine and Laura are on
cloud nine. As the hosts talk with the judges, this season’s pattern of judging
returns. There’s one clear baker straggling at the back, but Paul and Prue try
to pretend others are in contention to be eliminated. Mark may not have nailed his
showstopper, but he was third in the technical. Marc’s technical was rough, but
he pulled through on the showstopper. Linda was dead last in both. Sad as it
will be to see her go, and on a week she was excited for, it’s her time. As for
Star Baker, Hermine and Laura are in the running, with Dave and Peter’s middling
signatures holding them back. Ultimately, the judges award Laura her first Star
Baker, and as expected, they eliminate Linda. This is now two bakers in a row
who have seemed confident and capable only to slip up with major mistakes and
wind up eliminated. This is proving to be a surprisingly even cast. If bakers keep
making big missteps, it really could be anyone’s season.

Stray observations

• I again appreciated the episode’s delightfully dark
  introductory bit from Noel and Matt.
• Noel’s, “Last time, the bakers faced chocolate week and collectively
  ballsed up the basics” is a chef’s kiss level bit of voice over to acknowledge
  the brownie discourse the producers wisely anticipated in the fandom.
• Seriously, I wanted to eat all of these pasties. They look
  amazing, particularly on a rainy October morning. I would pass on the éclairs,
  though, and save room for those ridiculous tarts. Paul and Prue can keep the
  cages, just give me the good stuff.
• Lottie’s pyramid is lovely, but it would have
  benefited her to add some color either to her pyramid or her tart. They’re both
  beautiful individually, but their similar palate keeps them from being as visually
  striking as they could have been.