The Great British Bake-Off 2021

[JesusAndYourBush]

That baklava looked nothing like the baklava that I've had.  The thing I had was like shredded wheat soaked in honey with chopped nuts.  Was that not baklava then?
EDIT: Ahhh, I was thinking of kataifi (which I had trouble finding because I was spelling it gadaifi.)

καινούργια σελίδα μουνί

[dissolute ocelot]

Baklava seems nasty for a technical, but surprised they'd got this far without doing filo. Interesting too that they kept insisting it was greek, seems like a good way to reignite street brawls across north london.

Filo pastry is a faff, but it's not intrinsically difficult. Not that I've done it, but I've seen elderly women making it on "Rick Stein's Libya" or whatever. A lot of high end commercial baking is doing tedious stuff, so the show should be preparing people to open their own artisan bakeries, not just to write a column for Tesco Food Monthly.

Most sources seem to say filo (or Phyllo if you're a cunt) was originally Turkish, possibly in the Ottoman empire. Wikipedia mentions Greek cookery writer Athenaeus of Naucratis's 3rd century CE cookbook Deipnosophistae which had a recipe very similar to baklava except for one small detail: no pastry! So yeah, Turkish it is.

[dissolute ocelot]

Farewell to George. You were consistently crap, then made a decent dessert with an actual proper sugar dome that nobody else could do, and now you're out! Lizzie came up with what seemed to be an inedible dessert for the showstopper, lots of crap in a blue isomalt bowl with inedible but pretty flowers, and isomalt itself being not something you'd want to eat, and yet she lives to scouse another day. Fair enough if they were basing it on the whole series, with George being consistently bad and Lizzie at least erratic, but Lizzie was very lucky.

Caramel week was always going to be a challenge. I can't even caramelise onions, yet alone not-bitter caramel or sugar art. Disappointed that they were forced to make we-can't-call-them-Twixes rather than caramel shortbread, but there you go. The Twixes were hilariously bad in most cases, but only because they introduced a stupidly tight time limit that ensured nothing could cool adequately.

I noted that we saw virtually none of Jurgen and Guiseppe cooking, as they're too boring for the cameras to follow. Chrystelle and Chigs are still battling for 3rd place without any consistency, and surely it'll be farewell to Lizzie in next week's vegan/GF challenges, after she mouths off a lot about people who can't eat egg.

[The Mollusk]

Jurgen being all cute at the end chiming back with the "Jurgy" shit made me want to retch even more than the cold vomit surprise George served up for the first challenge. Stick to the science stuff mate it's what you're good at.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Can they bring in Freya as a special guest baker for vegan week, to see if she'd actually be any good at it? Just put her in her own little tent, like the red and white striped ones they used to put up over open manholes.

Really fancy a Twix now.

[Pijlstaart]

Should've had them do a tunnocks wafer, we all get the gist of twix, bits of hoogum on another thing, probably making them by accident all the time. Pretty sure there were some suitcases full of money exchanged behind the scenes, continual references to how great twixes are, everyone loves shop-bought twix and there's no point making them from scratch. All very suspicious, reckon some cottagecore mumsy blogs started doing DIY twixes and Mars Inc is throwing cash at anyone willing to PSA the societal cost of the bootleg twix racket.

Felt noel was muscling in on my turf with the insults. Agree about chigs, shades of Falling Down in this weeks costume, and it is a costume, the real chigs only wears apparel with monster energy logos on, he's spiritually cum-glued into a pair of tracksuit bottoms.

So too does bizzaroworld jurgen eschew the vulgarity of his polo shirts for a long-sleeved black number, chubby-svelte, physically very similar to what jurgen's evil twin would look like, assuming he has one. Dark and velvety, another mole reference?

Scouse frau cooks cake roses to evoke her cake-filled hair, this is intentional, she hopes that by extension we associate the rest of her with the isomalt bowl, she speaks of globularity but also of vesseldom, by positioning herself as a void in need of filling she emulates Paul Hollywood and seeks his favour. It's all very clever, but because the bowl is blue and she isn't, the more incisive among us can differentiate between them and ascribe to them different properties.

Classic gorg, curdled custard, scooping cream out the middle with his fingerless hands, can't pipe anything, can't cook anything, a sort of escaped rockery. Willing to bet in the where are they now section at the end of the series he'll have fallen to his death from a beanstalk.

[daf]

eschew

Bless You!

[Dex Sawash]

Appropriately, this product showed up at the Sam's warehouse club this week.
No idea what could possibly be inside the bottle. This was my first Twixless Halloween in decades. No better breakfast on Nov 1 than a pile of Twix with a mug of black coffee.

[dissolute ocelot]

What the fuck is Twix seasoning? Is that powdered millionaires shortbread or biscoff with 95% sugar?

Can you get powdered Crunchie? That I would buy.

[Blue Jam]

What the fuck is Twix seasoning?

Probably bloody lovely as a homebrew adulterant.

Dex Sawash, is that the same place where you found those horrifying chicken/Cinnabon monstrosities?

[JesusAndYourBush]

Put a Twix in a blender - Twix dust!  No thanks, I'd rather just have a Twix.

[Dex Sawash]

Probably bloody lovely as a homebrew adulterant.

Dex Sawash, is that the same place where you found those horrifying chicken/Cinnabon monstrosities?

I'll crumble and buy it eventually so I can answer what it is inside the bottle.
The cinnabon chicken product was in the normal grocery store.
The Twix seasoning is in the big warehouse store. Can scan barcode on my phone and pay with app so I don't have to do the checkout of shame.

[mothman]

I can't believe I'm getting invested in this. I said "OH SHIT!" when Jurgen dropped his sausage rolls.

[bgmnts]

Free from week ohmygod

[JesusAndYourBush]

I can't believe I'm getting invested in this. I said "OH SHIT!" when Jurgen dropped his sausage rolls.

I laughed and imagined Paul H eating one and saying "It's a bit crunchy... and there's a hair in it!"

[Huxleys Babkins]

Goodbye mad Fraggle woman. I've never been able to remember her name, mainly because she's annoying and reminds me of that one off Corrie who married Tyrone. He left her for a saucy brunette, and so it came to pass that the judges dumped Fraggle in favour of Crystelle. "Life" imitates "art".

[dissolute ocelot]

I'm hoping that all floors and shoes are sterilized. Or else they cheated somehow and Jurgen got to redo it.

I was amazed that several contestants have never seen a sausage roll. You leave the ends open, idiots! Field trip to Greggs!

Everyone trying to use as many eggs as possible in the plant milk challenge was disappointing. Embrace the veganism. Think of Freya watching at home, sobbing.

What's the point in our contestants making ice cream sandwiches if Paul has to pull them apart to eat them? Let's see you bite in and the ice cream trickle down your beard.

Poor Lizzie. On another day, she could have gone through, if her rivals had only slipped up slightly more. Chigs and Crystelle are utterly boring, Jurgen is only interesting because he's so boring, and Giuseppe tries but often seems only a couple of steps from being cancelled for chauvinism. Bored now.

[daf]

What a swizz - Giuseppe firmly welded to the bottom this week with his showstopper, and Lizzie still gets the chop!

[Norton Canes]

What a swizz - Giuseppe firmly welded to the bottom this week with his showstopper, and Lizzie still gets the chop!

Yeah what was going on there? I'm new to this Bake Off mularkey but I thought the premise was it didn't matter how well you did previously, you were judged on the current week's efforts

[Blue Jam]

Yeah this is BOLLOCKS. Poor Lizzie. She gave 'em finesse and they sent her home :'( They did a similar thing a few years back when someone who had done well in previous weeks (possibly Sophie in series 8) was allowed to stay and then ended up winning despite not being able to bake bread at all.

More miso from Crystelle. Does she work for the Miso Marketing Board or does she just have a massive stash which needs using up?

Chigs with specs keeps reminding me of Steve Carell.

[The Mollusk]

This was a "shantay you both stay" week if ever I saw one.

Speaking of which, BJ you not been watching UK Drag Race this series?

[Huxleys Babkins]

Whilst they absolutely should mark them based on this week alone, I'm sure Bincake Laura getting to the final last year has given them cause to want to give previous star bakers the benefit of the doubt. Not just because you ideally want a high standard in the final, but also because of the mental toll it takes on someone that falls apart under pressure like she regularly did.

It's ironic, because they've spent years trying to engineer challenges that can give shock results and have now realised that, actually, it's not that good to have a final that's judged on who managed to avoid a mental breakdown and who's bakes were the least shit.

[dissolute ocelot]

It's pretty clear they've decided weeks ago who is going into the final, with Jurgen and Giuseppe locked in, although the so-stylish Chigs and Crystelle have crept up on whatever bit horses do when they're sneaky in races. Lizzie like George and Maggie had been hanging round the bottom for weeks, sticking around at the expense of more boring contestants; it definitely seems like they're doing it on who makes the best TV and who's best on Insta.

Someone should tell Crystelle there's no Japanese week this year. Put the miso away. (While miso tastes nice, it's still a bit suspicious, with its stinky fermentedness like a half-eaten can of baked beans that have been sitting in the back of the fridge for months, and I wouldn't eat it unless it had been thoroughly heated.)

[Norton Canes]

I guess we should just be happy the winner will at least be a European or an ethnic.

[Pete23]

Wasn't Giuseppe mentioned as being up for star baker before ballsing up his show stopper? Doesn't seem that contentious that he stayed this week.

[dissolute ocelot]

Wasn't Giuseppe mentioned as being up for star baker before ballsing up his show stopper? Doesn't seem that contentious that he stayed this week.

It was very close this week. A fine line between star baker and getting the boot. But I agree Giuseppe wasn't terrible. They all did well this week, it's just that somebody has to be taken out the back and shot in the head.

[daf]

Thought Jürgen might have been in trouble after serving up his floor sausage rolls - maybe Paul didn't notice the pubes and fag ash.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Thought Jürgen might have been in trouble after serving up his floor sausage rolls - maybe Paul didn't notice the pubes and fag ash.

That's the base taste in Paul's mouth.

[Pijlstaart]

Liked the intro, nice to see Paul Hollywood target the growing vegan crowd by dressing as a friendly if effete forest spirit, was it green paint or does he look like that when you peel off the outer layer of bark?

Not really sure the purpose of the free-from week, a platform for the thrombotic fatt lucas, now composed entirely of dead cow, to ridicule the physical and indeed spiritual purity of the fusspot set, I expected deference, maybe wheedling, but he's clearly mocking us; baffling and I have no comeback. Questionable also to see them leaning on one specific brand-name, veganblock, as being a core part of vegan baking, maybe with channel 4 getting privatised they're doing some practice product placement, it'll be the only thing keeping them afloat soon enough.

Ice cream sandwiches, a stupid invention and thankfully entirely fictitious, judges said everyone's were good because they've never had one before and indeed were primed to think they'd be unpleasant "Wow jurgen, this ice-cream really tastes of bananas, bananas is it jurgen, oh wow", can't make a macaroon, but unconditional praise all the same, grim.

Lot of fairweather jurgen fans jumping ship after this, I'd guess, not graceful in defeat. A giggling nasty mole, Myergh-heh-heh, spill all the sausage rolls , Myergh-heh-heh, he stood on one as well, digging claws still caked in tunnel dirt. Had them down there a good few minutes. But we knew he wasn't considerate, didn't lift a finger to help the broken pie woman a few weeks ago, didn't help Crystelle with sugar domes last week, inconsiderate, he plays his trombone in a flat. Think the jurgen fans all like giuseppe too, jurgen fans like giuseppe, giuseppe's much taller and much more handsome and I think jurgen knows that, no matter how many belly button flashes he can sully the cutting room floor with, when giuseppe wins in the end all the jurgen fans will be jumping about screaming with joy. 5 years time, he'll be touring the student unions like bodger and badger, mark my words, regular folk won't have him because nobody likes an overachiever.

A bit sad to see the scouse lady go in the end, but it's too reactionary a setting for neurodiversity, one weekend without butter is too much to ask for, never mind your looney tunes science, people's brains just aren't different, they're not. Come back next series as a tradwife, say the innuendos and you'll be golden.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Yeah what was going on there? I'm new to this Bake Off mularkey but I thought the premise was it didn't matter how well you did previously, you were judged on the current week's efforts

Yeah, on more than one occasion it's been stated that it doesn't matter what you've done before, they only count what you've made on the day.  And then they go and say the only one with a disappointing bake was Jurgen but ahhhhh he's done good things before so he stays.