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

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.

can we all agree that the show lost its soul when they stopped using the squirrel balls insert shot?

BAAAAAAAA

needs more ducklings imo

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/great-british-baking-show-1234842469/

https://www.vulture.com/article/interview-great-british-bake-off-laura-adlington-bubble-filming.html

I’m always perplexed why ice cream and chocolate challenges continue to be chosen during the summer. Paul tries to play dumb about it! “Uh, I didn’t know it would be so hot.” Buddy, it’s July.
Trust me, we were all thinking the same thing. Really?! You just have to look back and laugh. It was uncomfortably hot, but we all got through it. Even though it was absolute carnage for me and Lottie, you can’t do anything but laugh. It was 98 and 99 degrees at times, but it feels hotter with no fresh air. Some days they would have to put the sides of the tent down to accommodate the cameras. Just imagine being in this hot tent with no windows open and hot television lights everywhere. You have your dress on, camera pack, and a pinny. You feel like you’re melting.

to be fair, it's rare that it gets that hot in the UK, I think they were filming over the two heatwaves of the summer, which each lasted a week or so. Normally doesn't get that much over 80, and frequently much lower than that.

They also mention the lights, which wouldn't help.

the thing that's annoying is that they can TOTALLY address this if they need to with a walk-in cooler that's so that chefs can quickly chill their stuff and cool down. it happens every season! every restaurant has a walk-in! Quit fucking around!

The reason I've read is that AC units are had for sound, though I live in SF so have no first-hand experience with them.

junior bake off is effin hilarious fyi.

What is that streaming on?

Never mind, channel 4

the kids are actually pretty good but when they fuck up they're like "oh well!"

I can imagine kids are really good at time management.

We're slowly getting trhough the 2019 series with my 6yo. Harry is hilarious, Liam is funny and great with the kids, Prue should never work with children ever again.

Also I kind of think they shouldn't send kids home every week - have it be a competition, yeah, but ending each episode with a talented young kid in tears is actually a bit of a downer.

Loving it, the kids are great. My friend’s daughter is trying for it next year - she is Georgian, really into baking, and massively into GBBO.

never has so much caramel been crystallised.

i do enjoy it when harry's jokes completely fail to land with the kids. and the general non-critical stance of it all.

(prue's been replaced for series 2)

my daughter turned down a piece of candy saying that white chocolate is "a bit too sweet" and it's 100% great british baking show haha

not worth the calories

would like to go on record as saying that is a hall of fame bad catchphrase

but ending each episode with a talented young kid in tears is actually a bit of a downer.

I think that too, but then I think about how much fun they're going to have watching themselves on telly, and it doesn't seem so bad. Although yesterday's was a tough one. "At least I got to hug Harry Hill." BLESS.

xpost hard agree

They did skip evictions the first week, which is something they should consider for the adult show, I think.

with kids, they should likely make the people voted off into judges

That’s a good idea

That's a great idea!

Slightly off topic: any of y'all seen The Great Pottery Throw-Down? It's Bake Off, but for pottery... my boo has been getting into throwing over the last year and a half, and her good pal gave us access to her HBO Max specifically so she could watch this show. It's fantastic so far! Obviously a bit more niche than baking, but OTOH more of it translates visually without smell and taste being as critical. And the stocky male judge's thing is occasionally he just gets so moved by what someone's accomplished that he starts weeping, which is a nice change from Hollywood's steez. Very very soothing and also educational to watch!

Oh yes, the Pottery Throw Down is the absolute business.

some discussion on the forks throws pottery thread: forks throws pottery (and maybe you do too?) - An ILX Ceramics Thread

oo, thanks!

Yeah, have your wife join me in that thread please Doc! It's lonely being the only chatty potter.
Where's her studio?