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

She stuck a thermometer in and said it was hot enough, but maybe that was just the boiling oil?

Yeah the burnt buns thing was weird too, nerves I guess.

Also she appears to have responded to every single comment on that IG post (!).

that's apparently her thing, which makes sense given the brand she's building.

Chrystelle, seems nice, was a good contestant, happy for her to do whatever

I'm usually fine with whoever wins in the finale but G is probably the first baker whom I was actively rooting for.

Also, while I think I'm more fond of Noel than some people here, I think the fact that Giuseppe was the only one who kissed the spatula is only going to encourage him.

oh they'll be selling Mr Spatulas before too long

Noel did have a weirdly aggressive vibe at times this season, but Matt is so much more obnoxious and unfunny.

Noel is redeemed by a capacity for empathy which Matt just doesn’t possess, even though at times you can see he’s striving for it.

Yes otm!

really great finish imho, i was very on board for the entire final four and thought any of them would have made a terrific winner. makes it feel like one of the strongest casts of all the seasons i've seen. if it weren't for Crystelle's raw dough i do think she could have possibly taken it, but how could anyone possibly begrudge the adorable, hardworking and extremely skilled Giuseppe making his family proud??? ;_;

I'm sort of disgusted with myself for finding Chrystelle disingenuous but the feeling persists. I think Noel, not exactly the model of perspicacity, was otm when he teased her about wanting it so bad it hurts.
Can someone release me from feeling guilty about this?
Anyway, I'm team Giuseppe, all the way.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Saturday, November 20, 2021 3:34 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

i’m rewatching the semifinal and this bit by noel was soooo good and cutting

It's okay to be a in a competition and want to win, though!

Competitiveness ≠ narcissism

agreed!

Oz version starts on monday afternoon and is daily (for i guess 2 weeks)

i thought this was interesting
https://www.vulture.com/article/great-british-bake-off-finale-anti-brexit-metaphor.html

Let’s start with an incontrovertible fact: This was a very English season of Bake Off. For the first time since 2011, there were no Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish bakers in the tent. Thus, unlike a typical season of Bake Off, its story was not about the constituent parts of the U.K. coming together to make a glorious whole. Instead, this would be a season about England, the former imperial heartland that led the charge for Leave, and its relationship to Europe and the rest of the world.

In place of the token Scottish or Welsh baker, the exotic color this season came courtesy of two contestants who loomed above the rest: the Italian Giuseppe and the German Jürgen. Both were products of a pre-Brexit age, Europeans who had made lives in England as adults, and they absolutely dominated the opening stretch, taking home five of the first seven Star Baker honors. Jürgen and Giuseppe were not just great bakers, they also made for great TV, each comfortably slotting into innocuous national stereotypes: Jürgen was rational and soft-spoken, a bit like a Teutonic teddy bear; Giuseppe was more animated, with wild curls and the world’s only flattering soul patch. Their beautiful, technically flawless bakes were the dream of the European Coal and Steel Community made flesh dough — two former wartime enemies seamlessly integrated into the most cozily British scenario imaginable. Even the incessant accent jokes from hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas carried less of an edge than they might have in decades past. Here it felt like family banter, a vision of the U.K. still firmly knitted into the European fabric.

Which is not to say that the English bakers got short shrift. There was Lizzie, a colorful Liverpudlian whose Scouse gumption made her a fan favorite. Another standout, Freya from Yorkshire, was not just a glimpse of the future — she’s both Gen Z and a vegan — but also the past: In name and hairstyle, she was a spectral reanimation of the Northeast’s thousand-year-old history as the Viking colony of Jórvík. Contrast them to Maggie, this season’s token Little Englander, an archetype that usually does well on Bake Off. But not this time. While Maggie was pitched as a doppelgänger for judge Prue Leith — yes, the same Prue whose son is a pro-Brexit MP — it was of course hard to avoid thinking of another figure from British political history. When she forgot to add the flour to her sticky toffee pudding, there was no alternative: The lady was not for (re)turning.

Here’s another incontrovertible fact: Four of the first five bakers eliminated came from constituencies that voted Leave in 2016, while the top seven were all from Remain cities. The native-born bakers who went the distance all hailed from a different Britain than the Brexit ideal, a multicultural nation of casual assimilation. The middle tier this year was supplied by London’s Greek community: cheery detective Amanda and burly Cypriot George, who provided a more realistic counterpoint to the characters in Stath Lets Flats. Another Londoner, Crystelle, probably would have won the whole thing were it not for an underbaked focaccia. She was competing not just on behalf of her loving Goan family, but also an entire cohort of millennial yuppies; the woman absolutely loved miso, tahini, and yuzu. (A Goldman analyst, Crystelle also represented global finance, the less-sympathetic segment of the Remain coalition.) And her fellow finalist Chigs rarely saw his own South Asian heritage mentioned. Instead, Chigs was portrayed as the quintessential Leicester man, right down to his love of pork pies.

Last week’s grand finale put a cap on all this. After Jürgen’s shocking elimination in the semis, the season came down to Giuseppe, Crystelle, and Chigs. And what were they tasked to bake in the Technical? Perfect spiral buns from Belgium, the home of the E.U. They looked delicious. Brussels isn’t all bad.

The season ended as most would have predicted it would, with a Giuseppe victory. But after the celebrations, there was also a bittersweet note: A chyron informed viewers that the proud winner had left England and returned home to Italy. The fantasy had finally been punctured. If Britain doesn’t have room for a guy like Giuseppe, what is the point?

It's not about competitiveness, it's about why they want to win. It's become such an established platform to start a career in food media, are they just in it for the insta followers? There's Crystelle, and Chigs was such an enigma to the end (I'm still weirdly fascinated by his shift to glasses, lol). It's impossible to know of course, but Guiseppe and Jurgen seemed pure of heart.

(maybe the glasses was like guiseppe running out of shirts)

I sorta figured he must have run out of contacts, but then he had multiple stylish frames, so was it fashion-based or did he just plan for this contingency?!

If you get in the finale and want to start a career in food media, why not? It sounds horrible going through the application process, multiple auditions, two months of shooting, constant prep, Daily Mail digging in your wastebins, etc. If you get that far, good on you - it seems like a lot of effort! Like - they've probably put in the hours by that point.

Guiseppe's writing a book - talked about it in the finale? - does that make him less "pure of heart"?

It's just a contrast between the early seasons of the show where people didn't necessarily know that they were going on a hugely watched show that would make them famous and able to make a lot of money. Nothing wrong with taking advantage of the opportunities, but Guiseppe at least was convincing in the appearance that he was doing it for personal reasons rather than becoming an influencer.

(I know it's naïve to think that anyone goes on any tv competition show without some desire for glory, but in the past this show has been better than most about letting the viewer suspend disbelief, which is a big part of why it was so successful in the first place?)

Without glasses, Chigs had kind of an intensely furrowed brow as a normal resting face. The glasses helped to either physically cover up the brow, or to prevent him from making that face in the first place (perhaps he had been squinting because he couldn't see very well). I assumed that the show made him wear them once they saw how he looked on TV. He was much more attractive with the glasses!

Ha I think you cracked it

sans glasses he appeared to have slightly crossed/misaligned eyes, the glasses likely a corrective for that

Yeah, maybe that was it.

It's just a contrast between the early seasons of the show where people didn't necessarily know that they were going on a hugely watched show that would make them famous and able to make a lot of money.

This is just the dynamic of all reality competitions that last for a while -- early seasons are "purer" (scare quotes are doing a LOT of heavy lifting there, because even in their infancy reality tv has always involve a lot of behind the scenes manipulation to create the naive facade), but past a certain threshold, the point of the show starts to move away from those origins (e.g. baking) and towards maintaining the show as a cultural phenomenon (GBBO). I think that latter part also explains the ever more dire time call bits and the handshake -- those things just sort of happened before but are now baked (ahem) into the show.

glad chrystelle didn't win, i'm sure she's fine but her whole "WHAT?!? I WON!?!?" thing got pretty annoying given that she's obviously a very very talented baker and also looks like a model. jurgen's vibe, which could come off as smug at times, was still preferable

i'm really kind of surprised by all the distaste for Crystelle - i really liked her! super skilled, cool under pressure, consistently made beautiful things that i would want to eat.

she works for goldman sachs ffs, she was clearly the villain of this season

I liked all three finalists, although I wouldn't want to be friends with any of them IRL.

And it feels like old fashioned sexism to say that you don't like Chrystelle because she's "trying too hard." Chigs gave up a job in sales to join the Bake Off. Guiseppe is from a family of chefs and now has a book coming out. But they're dudes, so...

Chigs is the only one who is regularly promoted to my IG. I have no idea how that algorithm works, but she hasn't been promoted to me at all, and I'm seeing a lot of him.

Crystelle is a fairly typical Habs old girl - second-gen professional middle class family, modern languages at UCL and then straight into a City job. A cool baker from a couple of seasons back, Selasi, worked for another one of the big banks.

It's okay to be a in a competition and want to win, though!

Competitiveness ≠ narcissism

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, December 2, 2021 9:46 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don’t think she’s a narcissist at all, she grew on me immensely as the season went on (full disclosure I think she’s hot), but the striving ambition that leads one to end up being, say, a goldman analyst was pretty obvious in her manner, and I think noel picked up on that, which is what made his little needling land

Noel's needling was affectionate and in good humour, can none of you Americans read English comedians at all?

Good humour doesn’t preclude sexism though.

yeah, the Noel/Crystelle scenes really crossed into uncomfortable for me. like she was constantly having to smile for the camera and go "seriously, dude?" at come-ons disguised as "jokes."

I'm not saying he doesn't fancy her, but I'm not sure that she was uncomfortable with him. It did seem more along the lines of he is her annoying brother. Like, I can't believe, at this stage, that the production team would be clueless enough to leave actual harrassment in the final edit? The dynamic of the last two series has been very different from previous years, it seems to me, because they are all together all the time for weeks instead of just for a couple of days a week. But maybe I am absolutely clueless on this.

I feel like a lot of noel's interactions during baking are quite awkward - he says the wacky thing, the baker acknowledges the wacky thing but then he lingers as though the wacky thing warrants further reaction. jurgen on more than one occasion had to shrug or ask him to go away.

Yes, I think with Jurgen that became part of the joke. Though at one point Jurgen did say he found Noel hovering a calming presence "believe it or not", but not sure if he was being serious.

There is a “laugh or I’ll shoot this puppy” quality to the reaction shots.

My secret shame about bakeoff is that I think Paul is great! His annoyingly selective palate aside, I’m always interested in what he’s going to say, enjoy watching him, and I like his apparent comfort with having the piss taken out of him constantly. Don’t really care if he’s a bit of a berk offscreen.

Oh yeah, me too. I bet he’s quite mesmerising in person.

The dynamic of the last two series has been very different from previous years, it seems to me, because they are all together all the time for weeks instead of just for a couple of days a week.

This for sure, you get the sense that you're just seeing the surface of a lot of the dynamics and inside jokes that have developed in the bubble.

Oz bake off, 5 minutes in. they have paul and pru, only paul is bald. and mel and sue. and a shed rather than a tent.

!! mel and sue!! really? awesome

not the actual mel and sue, but mel and sue analogs (rather than, say, noel and matt analogs). it's all a bit mirror-world ((c) william gibson)

oh ok
jeez! do not be casual with these details lol

One of them is actually a Mel, right?

Also, it looks like a lot of the episodes are on d@!1ym0t!0n!

oh, i did cut and paste the names somewhere...

"Claire Hooper and Mel Buttle and judges Maggie Beer and Matt Moran" ??????

(it's season 4, from 2018)

veg, if you love mel, you should be watching Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker. she hosts.

shut the front door! i will check that out thx