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

Let us also remember when they had Manon on for French patisserie week oh wait.

George's brainfart over what anniversary it was was hilarious though.

that was v funny

can I just say how cringe I find the mythologizing of the Hollywood Handshake, and how incredibly fucking smug it is and how everyone like gasps and oohs and ahhs and claps, it makes me like… embarrassed.

Yeah, the first rule of Hollywood Handshake is: don’t talk about Hollywood Handshake. It’s all got too much. Though, like many things about this show, I like it in spite of myself. This doesn’t generally extend to Noel and Matt’s bits, however.

Star Baker doesn't mean anything either if you think about it. You could be out next week.

What does any of it mean, ultimately? It’s all just built on sand. Life is just a soufflé.

solid episode, peaked with the technical in terms of stuff i would LOVE to eat. i bet some of those sausage loafy things are in fact delicious but i've not really had too many meat pies of this type so my taste buds had trouble fully connecting the dots. i could think of some of them as being sort of samosa or sausage-roll-esque, but it was still a mental reach.

i know the handshake is overblown & mythologized… but crystelle’s genuine reaction was quite funny & charming. and her pie sounded uhmazing

amanda’s pie sort of looked like in medical dissection exams where you have to show an exposed internal organ lol.

still no idea what jurgen purple donut filling was but it sounded good!

glad i get george for another week but he’s definitely hanging on by the skin of his teeth ~prays for george~

when i first heard the baklava technical i was expecting across the board stroopwafel-level disasters but it seemed like they were given additional instruction in the method & not fkying completely blind, which was good. still, cruel enough.

still no idea what jurgen purple donut filling was but it sounded good!

Ube, it's a purple yam used in Filipino deserts

Guiseppe’s “huge hassle” was like a never-heard Peter Sellers accent gag, super guilty lol

Massive hassle, sorry

yes! that was hilarious

the innuendo in this week's ep was off the charts! (george's rock hard sausage, prue's squirting with two holes comment, etc.)

baklava seems like an absolute pain in the ass to make even if you know what you're doing, so i thought they all did a good job considering

also belatedly agreeing with stevie d upthread re: chigs, major crush!

yeah innuendo-wise this week was like “Carry On Up The Pastry” lol

lowkey in love with Chrystelle but Giuseppe’s gonna win this

Chrystelle is so boring! I feel a bit bad for saying this, but I cringe every time she tries to loosen up and be “fun”.

She works at Goldman Sachs as an analyst.

Excellent Double-Entendre Week.

George really is kind of adorable, isn't he?

I really wish that Freya had made it to this week, I'd have loved to see a vegan take.

I've also been thinking more generally about the missed opportunity of exploring or featuring vegan baking more, and if the fault lies with Freya or the show -- I'd assume the show.

as a non-vegan baker i am okay without it lol

Freya seemed like someone transparently more interested in building a social media following rather than baking, altho as my daughters told me, that is pretty much the main reason to go on one of these shows now.

can I just say how cringe I find the mythologizing of the Hollywood Handshake, and how incredibly fucking smug it is and how everyone like gasps and oohs and ahhs and claps, it makes me like… embarrassed.

I hate this too. But I have to admit that if I was on the show, I'd be pretty excited to get one. If nothing else, you know Hollywood himself is very invested in the significance of the gesture.

if I was on this show I would make a “bit”‘out of offering Paul a handshake every time he tried my bake

iirc Henry in Series 10 did something like that
like he did a crap signature bake & after Paul had criticized & tasted it Henry reached out for the handshake to a stonefaced paul & Henry was like “No? Ok”

or i may be making all that up

I think you're right.

The only thing I like about the Hollywood handshake is that it has kind of grown organically, rather than being imposed on the production.

was interesting watching repeats recently where the handshake didn't even have a name. think it was superkins that started drawing attention to it, and only then after the first half dozen or so.

I enjoyed that episode a lot.

For once both Noel and Matt made me laugh: Noel's roundup of the the contestants' characters, esp Giuseppe, and Matt's "I don't think I've ever seen a man cutting liquid with scissors before".

Sad about George going. I can't remember a time when I've liked the last six so much. Crystelle's the only one I haven't warmed to.

Argh, I messed up the hide text. Can a mod intervene? SORRY

^^🚫 🚫 DO NOT READ THE POST ABOVE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS 🚫 🚫 ^^

Thanks, mods!

I can't read anything in this thread because I've just started the new season but Jurgen is absolutely too delicious to be true. And they know it. The specific way Neal said, "...along with his pet rabbit, Humphrey" was murderous.

Noel, sorry. I was in a rush so I didn't accidentally scroll up.

otm <3 humphrey

oh my heart… elimination sadness

jurgen’s showstopper was immaculate! and george’s too! lizzie’s looked like a hat i would def wear but sounded like not something i would eat

had seven heart attacks and died twice over crystelle’s dome. SO STRESSFULL

the twix technical challenge seemed like they either didnt allow enough time or took out a key instruction if no-one got close to what they wanted.

really would like some caramel now though for real

the Twix challenge prompted this revelation that Twix could possibly be based on a real baked good, much like Oatmeal Creme Pies and so on, and immediately got me thinking about how amazing the fresh-baked version must be.

yeah honestly had never considered scratch-baking twix

mine would turn out like george’s

They seem to have at least one a season of those kind of made-up recipes for things you buy in a shop, like wagon wheels and walnut whips! I don’t really approve of those rounds.

i quite enjoy Snackmasters, which is top chefs doing exactly this.

and oh yeah totally shared the suspense/shrieking at the screen during the sugar-dome operations. devoting a whole week to the vagaries and nightmares of caramel really pivots the show into "thriller" territory.

great episode. not really fair how much better than everyone else jurgen is tho

its just so heartwarming to think of bakers like Jurgen just baking at home for the family all their lives, and then revealed on tv to be truly, exquisitely talented - unknown to themselves, even.

its very good

absolutely. surely one of the show's best strengths is their casting team's eye for genuinely great, yet also genuinely amateur, skill. it's really touching to watch people really accept praise and get comfortable giving themselves credit for something great about themselves.

I don't like caramel, so this week my only contribution to the discourse is this:
Chigs fans: glasses, yay or nay?

yay

Glasses, yay. Plaid, double yay.

^^yes

Again I'm still behind so I can't read the whole thread but...is anyone else finding Maggie increasingly loathsome? It's been creeping up on me, but my loathing bloomed in full when she said, "Watching the show, when people cried I always thought, Buck up, it's just a baking show after all. But now that it's happening to me it's very very important and relatable."

She voted Leave, didn't she.

My god Lizzie is a treasure. She as much as just called Noel an annoying attention-starved child and in such a dryly otm way that he can't even be mad at her.

We loved the way that Paul and Prue failed to mask their lack of enthusiasm for this week's Greggs-esque technical challenge (clearly imposed from on high, and not set by Prue at all). Normally, when sampling the professionally created version ahead of the contestants' attempts, they're full of delight and wonder. This week, it was little more than a desultory contractual munch.

That aside, it was a particularly likeable week, and I didn't want anyone to go.