The Great British Bake Off recap: Buns out, puns out

Bread Week is one of the most feared ones on The Great British Bake Off, explains Abbi at the start of this week’s episode. And it absolutely is, if only because we are constantly told that bread is Paul Hollywood’s area of expertise. So the difficulty is ramped up here. There’s a palpable stress in the tent that hasn’t been around so far this season, and it results in some silly mistakes from a few of our bakers.

Let’s bake!

Signature

The signature challenge is a cottage loaf, i.e. a small round bit of dough stuck on top of a larger round bit of dough and baked together. It’s kind of like a bread snowman. Apparently this will demonstrate all the skills needed in bread making, in just two hours and 45 minutes.

The bakers can choose any flavors they like, and four of them go for garlic and rosemary. Some roast their garlic, others add in some seeds, but it’s this week’s least original of bakes when it comes to flavor.

Dana’s making a chipotle, smoked cheddar, and bacon cob loaf, and her mixing bowl shatters as she makes her dough, so she has to start again. On the other hand, she’s named her bread “Bread-ley Cooper” so she’s our winner, right?

Nearly everyone chooses to knead their dough by hand, for reasons that mostly seem to boil down to it being more “authentic.” Matty has no time for that though and lets his machine do most of the work. What a waste of muscles, Matty.

Surprisingly, it takes a whole 10 minutes for a juvenile joke about balls to make its way onto the screen, and while I’m not a 12-year-old boy, admittedly, it’s funny watching Alison try to keep a straight face.

Bread challenges are always fun because they’re among the harshest judged of the series, so the stakes are high. They’re also the most tedious sometimes, because so much time is spent waiting around for dough to prove that there’s just not that much action. To entertain themselves, and us, Tasha and Nicky play tic tac toe in flour, while Saku and Alison Hammond decide on a game of cricket with what looks like an orange and a roll of cling film.

There are two proves in the cob loaf process, and Abbi’s second goes badly, leaving her with two balls that just merge when baked, and a bake she nicknames “Flat Janice.” Abbi has done pretty well up until now, and it’s hard watching her struggle. Sometimes you just have a bad week.

To test whether their loaves are ready, a number of bakers tap on the bottom and listen for a hollow sound; in an absolutely perfect bit of deadpan humor—and what is probably going to be the best joke of the season—Tasha points out that that’s not something she can do.

Saku, Dana, Josh, and Tasha all produce good bakes with appealing flavors. Nicky and Cristy need more salt, as does Abbi, while Dan’s loaf looks rustic and appealing but has a really uneven distribution of pesto inside. Meanwhile, Rowan’s loaf is absolutely gigantic, and although it tastes good, Paul describes it as monstrous.“I’d rather be monstrous than mediocre,” says Rowan. Quite.

Technical

Unsurprisingly, Paul has set this week’s challenge, which is to make a batch of eight Devonshire splits. The judges are looking for soft, light, enriched dough buns that are split and then filled with jam and cream, all within the space of two and a half hours.

Paul says that this task is all down to the proving, and that’s how everyone will get their burns looking beautifully round and symmetrical. The proving means there’s a lot of waiting around during this challenge, during which Saku gets into an intense discussion with Noel about her favorite jam, and, to the shock of no one, reveals she buys her jam rather than makes it.

Dan, week one’s star baker, is the first to put his dough in the oven, which stresses Abbi out; when Dan gets them out though, they’re quite small, and he realizes he’s forgotten to add sugar. I have never quite understood how you forget to put a major ingredient in, but I have also never baked in a tent to a time limit, so…

Devonshire buns seem fairly straightforward, but this is easily the most challenged the bakers have been this season. The result is a technical in which everyone’s bakes look slightly different, and there are more than a few imperfect ones. It seems the uniformity of the previous weeks has evaporated.

Rowan, Abbi, and Cristy all produce buns that are too small, while Josh, Dana and Nicky’s are under-proofed but still have some redeeming qualities. Coming last in the challenge is…Dan, whose lack of sugar means his Devonshire buns are flat and crumbly and taste dry. Tasha takes second place, while Saku is in first. Yesssss.

Paul says that everyone’s bakes were at least under-proofed. I’m no rocket scientist, but it strikes me that if they’re all that way, maybe the time allotted for the task just wasn’t enough.

Showstopper

Going into the Showstopper, Paul is feeling honest. “The standard’s been pretty poor in the technical,” he declares. He still thinks Tasha, Josh, and Saku are doing pretty well, but Abbi, Rowan, and Dan are definitely in trouble.

The task is to create a “visually stunning plaited bread centerpiece” in four hours. The bakers have to include two different types of flour but they can choose between sweet or savory flavors (or both). Plaiting experience varies from baker to baker; Saku is an expert, from years of braiding her own and her daughter’s hair, while Matty has hardly ever braided. Tasha has watched lots of YouTube videos and is still rubbish at braiding. (Same, girl. Same.) Everyone will have to get very good, very fast, because Prue wants “intricate and amazing plaiting.”

There are various levels of ambition in the tent; Abbi is planning a nine-stranded plait for her tree trunk, Rowan is making something that seems to be about two feet tall and will also stand vertically, and Cristy is using an eight-stranded plait in her bake. Dana and Saku are sticking to three-strand plaits, while Dan is going to write out the word pizza rather than create an image. (I’m not so sure about that move.)

Plaiting doesn’t prove as difficult for most of the bakers as I assumed (although how Rowan manages to go from four to three to four strands in just one element of his creation puzzling). Instead, the difficulty lies in getting everything done to time, with so many different elements and decoration to try and squeeze in.

The pressure gets to Dan, who runs out of dough before finishing the “p” and “a” of the word pizza. Dan’s descent from star baker to whatever he is this week has been rapid. He decides to make some “dead dough” (a mix of just flour and water) to create the missing elements of his letters, but not making enough dough is a silly mistake to make and only adds to his error from the technical challenge.

As if he wasn’t having a hard enough challenge, he runs out of time to bake all his letters, and you don’t have to be a bread connoisseur to know he’s serving up a large amount of unbaked dough. Honestly, for me this is enough to send him home, since at least everyone else baked something, even if it was to varying degrees of success.

Josh’s tiger mascot is amazing, according to Paul, and he’s made the right decision to go with two enriched doughs for his bakes. Prue says it’s “absolutely delicious,” while Paul describes it as “ingenious, well thought out, and well executed.” Josh is definitely one to watch.

Saku’s peacock looks great, but while the artistry really works, it doesn’t taste brilliant, and one of her doughs is a “bit gluey in the mouth,” according to Prue, which is not something you ever want to hear about something you’ve cooked.

Rowan got his tree standing up, but his dough is raw and the flavorings, especially the sweet curry, are too much. Nicky’s is good if you get the fillings, but the distribution is off, while Matty has one dry dough. Cristy’s and Dana’s both look good; Dana’s bread is a little soft but tastes right, while Cristy’s design isn’t really a centerpiece but both her challah and babka are delicious.

Abbi, who has had a tough week (there have been tears) produces a rudimentary design but it seems like she’s done just enough to save herself. Which leaves us finally with Tasha, who has been steadily showing her skills in the tent. Paul says her Medusa design is a “work of art” with real expression, while Prue declares Tasha is “one hell of a bread baker.” Her bread tastes great, her flavors are spot on, and Paul tells Tasha she really understands bread.

It’s been, as to be expected as the weeks go by, the toughest installment so far, with the pressure of the tent finally showing. In the judging discussion, Paul says some of the bakers got caught up in the plaiting and ignored flavor and texture. The task has changed nothing in terms of who is in danger and who is in line for star baker, apart from the fact that Saku—sob—is out of the running to win.

In the end, star baker goes to Tasha for the second week in a row. Going home is… Abbi! That is a huge surprise, and I think absolutely the wrong decision. Yes, she had a tough week but overall I think Dan was a lot worse, and his mistakes were careless. He presented a bake that was mostly raw, so it’s astounding that he got through. I’ll be seething until the next episode.

Next week: chocolate!

Stray observations

• Nicky’s Scottish accent seems to have increased tenfold this week, not least when she says “horns,” turning a one-syllable word into something much more complex (and to Alison’s liking).
• We got what I think was our first major baking tray wave of the season, as nearly everyone wafted their trays over their buns in the technical challenge to try and cool their bakes down. I refuse to believe this has ever worked.
• Pun count: absolutely endless. In between the fifth joke about balls and the tenth snigger over buns, I lost count.