On Your Marks, Get Set, Baaaaake! A Thread for Great British Baking Show / Bake Off & all of its sundry delights

I know it's all a creation of the editing, but Dave sponging down his pristine countertop as Laura wrestles with a lake of spilled glaze was pretty funny.

Also kept thinking "I wonder want Lacan would make of this talk of mirror glaze."

I agree that what happened seems ridiculous, but on the other hand, you can't just decide to bloody wing your showstopper in the semi final and expect to get away with it.

Laura is definitely the baker this year whose cooking I would most like to eat. Given how it looks, it must taste absolutely divine for her to still be there.

I've seen Twitter refer to Laura as Live Laugh Love Woman which seems harsh but fair.

LLLW would surely take pride in prouncing saverin Frenchily?

The first round last night brought back memories of my brother having a rum baba in the Flamingo restaurant in Rhyl (where we went every summer), and hiccupping all the way back to Chester on the train. I think I thought that's what "being drunk" looked like. Ah, the '70s.

(This misconception didn't last long; the day after his A-levels, his pals plied him with Southern Comfort and *then* I got to see what "drunk" was like).

I have never seen this programme, probably never will, but have been attracted to click on this thread for the first time by the fact that Mike has posted to it. I should have known he'd be talking about trains from Rhyl to Chester.

I've only really started watching it in the last couple of years. If I may borrow the words of Lebanese Druze progressive socialist Walid Jumblatt, when asked by Alexei Sayle what he thought of Rocky II - I think it's "alright".

I am now trying and failing to find some Lacan-related baking puns. I mean, 'I'm adding a blackberry jouissance to my corps morcelé' would probably sneak past Hollywood's beady eye...

Anyway, Hermine was a total travesty.

The leaving contestant has just claimed on Extra Slice that their dad told them all about when they were on the Army in World War II.

I mean I suppose he could conceivably have been 60 when they were born, but it seems fairly unlikely...

Oh my god I’m so gutted, like this has seriously ruined my day!! What the hell???

deeply bummed!! what is this world. CANCEL THE FINALE

but she did deeply fuck up her finale: the gelantine blocks looked 🤮
she seemed a bit more subdued & in her head this week? pressure etc idk.

never heard of cube cakes but i’d eat the hell out of them yum

matt giving laura the good pep talk during the technical was so lovely <3

I feel like that Scottish guy from a few years back who was very god at sourdough and bread did a similar thing - overthought what should have been an easy week and second-guessed himself and then fucked up badly. So sad, ****** was great, with a chill vibe was such an antidote to Laura's butterfingers antics.

Still seething, [redacted] was robbed. As to Laura, the last time I saw a river of chocolate that huge/chaotic, a bunch of oompah loompahs were present.

that was insane, she is perhaps THE captain chaos of the entire series

This season has been brutal with eliminations.

I will say that I was a Yankx don't click on this thread midweek now that I know that's when the show drops for Britishers.

I really like (STILL IN IT) and still thought this was a shock and an error, (EJECTED) just obviously has way more chops and has shown cumulatively more skills and adaptability, seems like someone you'd want in the finals, much more likely to deliver something truly beautiful in the final showstopper, etc. i get that if you really tank it, there's not a lot of wiggle room at this point, but (STILL IN IT) made a spectacular, kind of glorious MESS this week, and has been in trouble many times. are they really more of a contender to win the whole thing than (EJECTED)? i mean, i'd love to see it happen! not super into the other two left tho obv they can bake.

Everyone OTM, really a bummer. And her insistence on consciously mispronouncing the French terms compared to Hermine (obv) just rubs it in.

It's a bitter irony that EJECTED affected an "Oh I'm just making things up as I go along" vibe for a lot of the season despite very clearly being very experienced, refined, and well-prepared, but then the semifinal week happened.

Here’s the amazing Hermine’s heartfelt and hilarious letter to all you Bake Off fans. #GBBO pic.twitter.com/n4jBYrnE60

— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) November 17, 2020

That'll teach me not to mute #GBBOFinal as well as #GBBO on Twitter. Spoilerized.

a fair winner I think

Laura proved throughout the episode that she was not a competent enough baker to be in the final.

Totally - I spent a good deal of the first half shouting 'it should have been Hermine!' Her showstopper looked like the aftermath of a gall stone operation.

hahahahaha

not to be all Jordan Wossisname, but, tidy desk, tidy mind

I felt bad for Laura last week - it wasn't her fault that Hermine got dropped. And the judges have always said Laura's food tastes great (even when it looks like shit) so perhaps she earned her place.

That said, she really wound me up in the final! There was something very triggering about her avoidant personality type - the childish way she divided the world into good and bad things ("I hate coffee"); the way she used false modesty ("I'm terrible at everything") to manipulate people into lowering their expectations of her; and the way she cheerfully dismissed her husband ("he says I'm a nagger, but I wouldn't have to nag if he did things properly"). I found it very exhausting to watch. In the end, I felt like she made Dave's passive-aggression seem like a more understandable, forgivable way of being.

If it wasn't Hermine, I'm glad Peter won though.

Oops I tagged badly.

** SPOILER ABOVE SORRY**

hahahahahaha

show hidden text

I think Laura's funny, and she's handling the inevitable trollfest on Twitter very well. And yeah, she didn't ask to be put in the final when she clearly wasn't up to it.

It’s embarrassing that she made it so far, and from a series of flukes, truly the Roxxy Andrews of GBBO where she was clearly the worst and was way out of her league and she knew it

That being said I don’t resent her, like it’s not really her fault she stumbled her way to the end and better baker after better baker happened to keep fucking up

bit of a belly flop of an ending. none of the finals were particularly interesting and both the earlier challenges fell under the heading of "make a what now?"

On the plus side watching this season has inspired me to watch more of the previous.The last one I saw was the Bingate season.

The season that Peter cited as his favorite IS really great - it’s on Netflix in “The Beginnings” & is worth a watch if you’ve never seen

~high~ drama plus many heart-eyes emoji contestants

i think it’s S5 in the US (series 3 in UK)

anyway it was a nice ending

the dedication to Luis made me cry & it got awfully dusty when they showed Dave & his wee new babby <3

lovely folks

bit of an odd finale for sure

also Laura was a shambles but it’s not like she was a bad baker. she clearly had some deep baking knowhow and even her worst flops still ~tasted~ great. she drove me crazy being so disorganized but i think that overshadowed her actual talent. The judges usually do lean in favor flavor over presentation, or at least give an allowance for that.

yeah she's a great baker, maybe not someone who shines under time constraints and high pressure, but clearly made delicious food and on a few occasions also great presentations. she obv deserved to be on the show, if maaaaybe not the finals. iirc her very best weeks just happened to line up with middling performances by overall "better" competitors, and her very worst weeks were overshadowed by someone middling having a crash-and-burn. it'll happen that way sometimes in an elimination-style format, so she has as much to be proud of as any other runner-up on the show!

peter seems like a nice, hard-working, talented and earnest boy but we just never warmed up to him at all. dave's tiny little grumpy edge he showed early on just kinda sat there for us, but it was nice seeing him grow as a baker, and his expectant-father narrative was pretty endearing by the end. but still not a fave at any point.

the idea of baking for the locked-down crew was really lovely i thought, wish we'd lingered more on that. the little check-ins with everyone at the end were also sweet.

If this was football Laura would be the plucky underdog on a lucky streak and all the neutrals would be rooting for her. But I think the end result was right.

The last Extra Slice (the after-show show we get in the UK) felt like a party, albeit a socially distanced one. But the last one is always a bit of a rush because of the 3 interviews they have to do. Dave proposed.

I knew Peter would walk it if he didn’t fuck up because he did quite intuitive things in the kitchen such as listening for a particular sound made by ‘done’ cakes, but it would have been a much more exciting final with Hermine amongst the three.

the finale was missing a "serious long-term baker with all the rules of thumb and types of dough deeply internalized" type - Hermine certainly, or even Marc E might have made a more interesting mix. Dave is on his way to that territory and i feel like his time on the show advanced him a long way towards that actually.

just glad that the guy who abandoned his pregnant wife for six weeks in favour of being on the telly didn’t win tbh

yeah, struggling to understand how he justified that tbh

I left a haircut halfway thru because my partner thought she was in labour, what would Dave have done in that situation?

yeah i always squint at stuff like that. i guess you never know what the dynamics actually are. every so often on Survivor (no spoilers for season 40 please!) you get someone whose deal is like "my spouse/parent/kids told me that i always sacrifice myself for everyone else, and now they're letting me live out my dream and i'll never be able to thank them enough" etc ---- usually said through heaving sobs during the episode when a family member comes to the island for a visit. dave needed at least a little bit of this for me to even potentially be rooting for him imho.

I imagine you apply for these things not really expecting to get onto them and when it comes, you have a difficult conversation - something along the lines of 'it's a chance of a lifetime, you have to do it'.

And talking of babies, Peter looks like he is perpetually teething.

Anyway we can confirm for sure that the judges really do go based on the merits of the bakes and there’s no fiddling with the elimination process based on what would make good tv.

I'm glad that people are pushing back against Laura's naysayers, for whatever reason her nominally failed baked never stood out in my mind. As for finalists who lacked presentation skills, Ruby v1 comes immediately to mind.

Of course Hermine would've definitely made the final more interesting.

Ruby’s stuff was a lot more ambitious than most anyone on this series.