The Great British Bake Off: Bread Week

October 8, 2024 3:06 PM - Season 15, Episode 3

Whose Horns of Plenty will rise to the occasion? And who'll knead to dust themselves off?
posted by ellieBOA (18 comments total)

This looked like such a difficult week to judge—if it hadn't been for those bagels, who knows who would have gone out. It seems like the standard is really high all round this year.
posted by rory at 11:36 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Four quid a month for ad-free All4 is making a huge difference to my Bake-Off viewing this year, along with some Taskmaster catching-up. An hour and a bit of Bake-Off vs. 90+ minutes feels much more manageable. (I'll ditch it when it's over and cycle onto the next streaming service as usual...)
posted by rory at 11:40 AM on October 9

It looks like they learned from last season's Bread Week and are now allowing enough time to prove AND bake.

I think John has been, overall, a stronger baker than Andy. But cynically, they have several cute young gay guys in the tent, whereas with Hazel gone we really only have Andy for the "salt-of-the-earth regionally-accented working class" column.

I would have liked to see Nelly get star baker; I think her bakes deserved it.

Good to see Illiyin and Georgie showing strongly after previous wobbles.

But this year's high standard is delightful! So much deliciousness in that tent; so many recipes I'd like to try. Hollywood at the end saying this was the best bread week ever was icing on the cake (egg wash on the bun?)
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:58 PM on October 9 [3 favorites]

But this year's high standard is delightful!

(I haven't seen this episode yet)

Yeah, but I do miss a little bit the dynamic from early seasons where one or two of the sacrificial lambs would just refuse to get sacrificed and would just hugely improve and not get nuked until like the quarterfinals.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:29 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Dylan is a dead ringer for Puss in Boots, that is all.
posted by Rora at 6:48 PM on October 9 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it feels like this year's batch of bakers didn't have the usual 2-3 that you wondered how they made it past the initial qualifying tests and sort of waited for them to get sent home with the occasional surprise sticking it out for longer than you would have expected from their first week in the tent. Maybe that would've been Hazel and Jeff, but we didn't get to see that much of them, so it's hard to tell.

So, yeah, at this point I dunno, they're all pretty darn good, it's just going to need a bad week for the next couple to end their time in the tent. I worry that Sumayah might be one of them? Her bakes were great in the first two weeks, while this week wasn't her strongest outing, and it just sort of feels like she might have a week where she just doesn't have the experience to make it up as she goes along?

Nelly is growing on me, and that plaited wreath of hers was really fantastic. I'm surprised how many of the rest of them seemed to immediately forget the 4/3 plaiting.
posted by Kyol at 6:55 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]

I love nelly. she told paul he was shiny
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:03 PM on October 9 [10 favorites]

I like Dylan, but I thought Nelly should have won this week. He was last in the technical!
posted by oneirodynia at 7:18 PM on October 10 [8 favorites]

I adore all of the bakers this season. They're such a delightful group!
posted by velvet_n_purrs at 9:17 AM on October 11 [1 favorite]

I was really pleased that Dylan won Star Baker on the strength of his Signature and Showstopper bakes.

The floor on the Technical seemed really high, so I’m not surprised that Dylan won overall even though he came last there. Paul mentioned that they were all very tasty and if I recall just about all the bakes were good, nothing extremely under- or overdone. Mostly came down to plaiting ability.
posted by potent_cyprus at 10:02 AM on October 11

(also I loved that everyone had to bake buns, a hole and a horn)
posted by Pallas Athena at 11:17 AM on October 11 [1 favorite]

Team Nelly all the way! I adore her.

And yeah, this whole group seems great. Usually I don't mind the first several weeks as folks go home, but here we are in week 3 and I already feel sad about it. LOL.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:52 PM on October 11 [5 favorites]

I was convinced Paul, with his limited palate, was going to complain about the gochujang in Dylan's buns, so I was genuinely shocked that not only did he like it, he gave Dylan a handshake. Gochujang is my favorite...condiment? ingredient? not sure what to call it, but I love it and was totally expecting disaster.

Poor John and the bagels.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 8:38 PM on October 11 [5 favorites]

The Great British Baking Show Recap: Buns in the Oven [Vulture / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 6:20 AM on October 12

Man Nelly is so cool, definitely my favorite contestant right also far. I do also really like Mike too, but it's interesting just hit face I think but he always looks like he's about to cry to us.
posted by Carillon at 3:00 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Andy's cornucopia was fairly dreadful, but between the bagels and the underwhelming buns, I can see why John went home. Still, very sad to see him go.

I liked the technical with a demonstration. I'm glad they're mixing things up with the technicals this year. It's much nicer to have everyone understand what they're aiming for and then see who executes it best, rather than having people go off in the entirely wrong direction.

Nelly is amazing, and I'm so glad she had such a good week, but Dylan's showstopper was unbeatable I think. Plus the handshake for the gochujang buns. I don't think the judges ever take the technical into much account, except occasionally as the nail in someone's coffin when it's a coin flip on who's going home.
posted by the primroses were over at 4:32 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Nelly is so vibrant! And oh my, Dylan is going to grow up into a very handsome man, isn't he? I don't watch Baking Show for beauty but that person is easy on the eyes.

So sorry to see John go. He seemed that he'd be one of the group to goof around and ease things.
posted by goofyfoot at 11:54 PM on October 12 [2 favorites]

It's pretty clear to me that Dylan got Star Baker on the strength of those gochujang buns. Paul's notorious for consistently pooping on Asian flavors (god help anyone who tries matcha with him) and I think he was so thoroughly and genuinely surprised that it worked AND that he loved it that that gave Dylan the edge over Nelly (who I would have picked). I imagine there's not a lot of delicious surprises for Paul at this point in his career, and good on Dylan for threading that needle.
I do think it's kind of unfair to Nelly since he came in last in the technical though.
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:13 PM on October 21