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

maybe it's just that we recently watched the one Junior Bake-Off season that's on Netflix, but the caliber of baking seems pretty high all around with this crew. the macarons, apart from a few obvious duds, were quite cute across the board!

cast seems really promising so far, lot of likeable energy in the tent. Janusz, Dawn, Maxy, Sandro and Syabira all doing some great-looking bakes so far, and most of the others have done at least one really impressive thing in the first two eps. the fellow who looks like Simon Pegg has some great reaction shots.

oops, requesting a mod to fix that to spoiler text, sorry!

maybe more weeks in the tent with all the diversity will do Tory woman good.

two of them out with, i guess, covid this week. seems slightly unfair that someone will be eliminated this week

Or not! But just building up for a double elimination whenever they feel like it further down the line.

Australian bake off had 4 finalists because they couldn't decide which of the semi finalists to let go, and it made no real difference. but yeah, there'll be a week where they can't decide between the bottom two and they'll both go.

Sandwich "cakes" all looked like horrible messes on the inside

Like bread week, I just don't see the point of the pizza round. You can't make great-tasting pizza (or bread) in a day. It takes time.

Also, most of those pizzas looked terrible.

oh god I was HOWLING at some of those pizzas

The showstoppers looked even worse. Cod, mushy peas, chips and mayo in a cake? no thank you.

imho bread week should just always be a non-elimination round. yes yes i understand that baking and bread are kind of fundamentally linked, but i feel like it's testing things that aren't really the main focus of the show, or of a great many 'amateur bakers.' nice for those who are good at it to have a chance to shine and pick up a Star Baker or first-place in the technical challenge... but i don't ever really want someone to go home on it. certainly not if the challenge is "layer cake of bread and mushy peas," yikes.

Yeah, only got on to the final round last night. I mean, I was impressed by the cookery display but pretty much every one of them got a boke boke boke from me.

We're assuming Abdul and Rebs had COVID, yes?

I honestly don't think they should have a bread round, unless they're given two days to make a decent loaf, with preferment, etc. I'd love to watch them all try and make a decent sourdough - I'm sure they'd do great stuff with slashing and really raising the game. But otherwise bread week is always a damp squib.

more than usual, it already feels like there are 3-4 bakers who are clearly going to go all the way to end (maxy, janusz, sandro, and maybe syabira) and the rest are pretty much chaff. of course things can change but those bakers feel way ahead of the others.

i'm not really rooting for any of these bakers yet on a personal level. janusz is cute i guess and i like sandro's '90s r&b heartthrob style but they all feel flat personality-wise so far.

It's been what, 4 episodes so far? Still plenty of time for them to warm up to the cameras.

Definitely agree that the divide between the creme de la creme seems starker than seasons past. I liked Scottish Guy 2 who said he could do a creme pat in his sleep and then actually sleeps through making it.

Did Sandro go to culinary school before becoming a nanny or whatever? Seems like a ringer.

janusz and sandro might end up as gay icons so i'm starting to feel invested in their success. they also seem to have a cute little friendship

Lots of chatter that Sandro used to actually have a cake business, in clear breach of the rules, but the defence seems to be that it never really operated as a company and was more of an Instagram related thing - conveniently skipping over him getting paid cash money by e.g. Maya Jama/Stormzy and Perrie Edwards.

My guess is that somehow, completely incompetently, they missed it in background checks and vetting and he gets very far in the competition so they've had to double down very early.

I can't imagine the selection of the competitors has changed since Dani spilled the beans so it's hard to see how they missed it (although of course the most interesting thing about that was how it exposed anyone who claimed someone else out them in for it or they're an inexperienced baker is a total liar playing naïve for the cameras).

pet theory: covid-induced anosmia made it hard to judge how much chilli she was adding

Very much welcoming next week's technical from the preview which looks absolutely old school, and about time too. That was just awful tonight. Cook a steak? Piss off.

I'm hearing some hilarious/horrible stuff about British Bake Off's Mexico Week (or whatever they called it).

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2022/10/05/GBBO_custom-0987632ffeea48eb4337fd9ff17264d193c310e2-s1200-c85.webp

The juan and only Matt & Noel welcome you to Mexico Week! 🇲🇽🇲🇽🇲🇽 #GBBO pic.twitter.com/A4aX43H5rd

— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) October 4, 2022

Peeling an avocado
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/cJJYJ51fmaswMGF0e4JNdw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTYzNztjZj13ZWJw/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/a6tYnvCCHS8sa4hK8BP6Dw--~B/aD00MTg7dz02MzA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/huffpost_uk_744/e885ca7d001b5c8db0d4362fef2710c1

Of course, they've never done any other foreign food badly, or made inappropriate jokes. This is entirely new ground. Welcome to the thread.

Misunderstanding foreign food and stupid racism is not new to this show. It's just that America has noticed it. My major issue (other than a ton of people assuming we're all that woman who can't say guacamole) is that there was no baking involved in that stupid taco challenge.

oh i'm plenty aware that British people make terrible food and are racist, it's just that i never tire of pointing it out

Trust me, it's fucking embarrassing that this gets broadcast round the world and results in ridiculous generalisations being thrown straight back.

do British people also generally fall for the easiest trolljobs

This week excepted, I’m glad Matt has been a little more low-key this year – in fact at points it seems like he doesn’t want to be there at all

No, just me. I am not the whole of Britain. I can pronounce guacamole for a start.

The thing I find embarrassing isn't so much the British home bakers trying to make these unfamiliar confections, it's the British (or South African) judges getting all expert about it when they haven't much more of a clue than the bakers. A couple of guest judges a season could take a lot of the sting out of it.

Yes, Masterchef suffers from this a lot too.

Yeah I felt this when they did Japanese week a season or two ago

Still can’t forgive the asshole who put white chocolate in his bagels about ten seasons ago

Very much the "what have I got hanging around the kitchen that I could stick in here?" school of baking, as practiced by my grandmother, bless her.

My grandmother once made us "treacle toffee", except she skimped on the butter, so her grandchildren spent a happy afternoon running round the back garden menacing each other with shards of sticky glass. A GREAT DAY.

lmao

finally catching up on new season

am i crazy or has Sandro been on a tv show before? i swear i’ve seen him before
also i find him a little creepy idk why

also Carole looks like Thorgy Thor from drag race and i cannot unsee it

loool my skelton has left my body watching the Mexican ep

it reminds me 20+ years ago on his first visit to Australia we were at some terrible sports bar for melbourne cup day & mr veg overheard a drunk girl order a “QUESTALADILLA” and died laughing and this whole episode has been that moment x 10

why does sandro’s tres leches cake have a mustache on it

Zapata

lmao

look James seemed lovely but between the accent & the lisp i cannae understand a word ye said lol sorry dude

rebs always seemed kind of doomed
like a chaotic orchid
also those eyebrows lol

it reminds me 20+ years ago on his first visit to Australia we were at some terrible sports bar for melbourne cup day & mr veg overheard a drunk girl order a “QUESTALADILLA” and died laughing and this whole episode has been that moment x 10

On one of our visits to Sydney, Mexican food was suddenly very trendy. We went to the opening of a bar my brother in law had helped build on the harbor and my wife and I were shocked by the let's say culturally questionable depiction of Mexico and Mexicans. Lotsa fake mustaches, bandoleers and sombreros.

look the only mexican restaurant i knew of for the first 20 years of my life was called TACO BILL

this commercial is from 2012 to give you an idea of what we were working with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mwd0Q_mLQ

= basically the vibe of this ep

My friend was in Norway a few weeks ago. Here's what she posted:

https://scontent-ord5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/298013585_10225775579271073_2016522644360085404_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s1080x2048&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=rsp7AKm2xPAAX_mxwVa&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-1.xx&oh=00_AT_TgWveCbCvQePlX1SI7oDsv1MEVpf95qI8Ml0mgeIWbQ&oe=6347B524

Norwegian tacos made by a Colombian woman. She asked if we knew what pico de gallo was.
ETA for context: tacos are hugely popular here. "In Norway, 'fredagstaco' has become a cultural phenomenon. Fredagstaco was coined by the younger generation and translates to “Friday’s taco.” Tacofredag is another common name for it. As the week comes to a close, many Norwegians have tacos on their minds for Friday night dinner."

cool!

the worst thing with this ep was how everyone kept saying "taco" to refer to just the tortilla. "that's a well-baked taco, that is." also the many references to "tres leche" even when the terminal S was written out on the screen!

guest judges is a great idea, trishyb!

rebs always seemed kind of doomed
like a chaotic orchid
also those eyebrows lol