Brace yourself for Soggy Bottom Bingo – it’s Pastry Week!
Hands down, this is my favourite week! Pastry is the king of beige foods. And for one very good reason: life is better wrapped in pastry.
So what did the pastry-themed week have in store for the remaining seven bakers? Would it be all puff and nonsense? Would the bakers crack and flake under the time pressures?
Let’s find out!
**** SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the outcomes of each of the challenges, this week’s star baker and the sixth of The Class of 2025 to go home. Please don’t read on if you have yet to watch the Pastry Week episode and don’t want to know the outcome! ****
THE SIGN OF A GOOD BAKER
According to Prue, pastry week is one of the most important weeks in Bake Off because if you can’t make pastry then ‘frankly, you’re not much of a baker.’
Phew, that’s me flying under the radar for a little while longer then 😉
Aside from my love of all things pastry, I think that’s why it’s my favourite week. This week (and bread week) are the two that I feel really show more of the bakers’ technical talents rather than their creativity and artistic flair as some of the other weeks tend to major on.
THE SIGNATURE: SAVOURY PASTRY PLAITS
For the first of the pastry challenges, the judges were expecting the bakers to produce crisp, flaky, laminated pastry with a savoury filling, shaped into a beautifully plaited design.
They were given two and a half hours to complete this task, which for once seemed like a decent amount of time! Even though the pastry making process is quite protracted (laminated doughs require chill time in between each roll and fold), the fillings typically go into the oven uncooked, so this takes away the time that would otherwise be needed to make and cool the filling.
Hopefully the bakers remembered that and didn’t try to make their lives harder by choosing a pre-cooked filling…
AMAZINGLY BRAVE
As we learnt what each of the bakers had chosen to create for the pastry signature, Lesley told us that she was using a Paul Hollywood recipe for her filling. But she had decided to pimp it up a little bit to improve it. Bold.
And then there was Toby. Who decided he was going to do a full puff pastry, even though it wasn’t required for the challenge (rough puff pastry is a lot quicker to make and is still a laminated dough). Amazingly brave is how Prue described him. Paul looked slightly incredulous and told him he wouldn’t have enough time to make it.
I must admit that I feared Toby may become a victim of his own ambitions on this one. I’ve seen [more than] enough TV reality food programmes in my time to know that, for those contestants who decide to go over and above the brief, it usually doesn’t end well. It’s so much better – and safer – to knock it out of the park with what is expected than to go rogue and not quite pull it off.
But then Toby has shown us time and again that he’s a risk taker. And I kinda like that about him.
FORTUNE FLAVOURS THE BRAVE
Anyone who works a lot with pastry knows that you need really punchy flavours for your fillings. For them to cut through the pastry, they need to be a bit, well, extra.
So what did the bakers opt for in an attempt to wow the judges?
Tom used his time living in Hong Kong as inspiration for a fermented soy and chilli oil infused sausagemeat filling, wrapped in red pastry shaped like the severed tail of a dragon. Lesley’s take on Paul’s sausage plait had a layer of homemade gooseberry compote through the middle. And Jasmine added leek, apple, thyme and smoked paprika to her sausagemeat.
Toby and Nataliia both picked chicken as their main meat content, with Toby adding bacon, leek and cheese and Nataliia wrapping her chicken and bacon around garlic butter sticks in a nod to her Ukranian roots and its national dish, chicken Kiev.
Aaron chose beef as his meat filling, which he flavoured with vibrant Jamaican curry spices and Scotch bonnet chilli.
And Iain’s meat-free savoury plait was created from tofu, broccoli and potato (see earlier note about pastry needing punchy flavours 😯)
PLAIT’S THE WAY I LIKE IT
So what did the judges make of their flavour combinations? And their plaiting skills? Did they live up to Paul’s expectations of neat, precise and incredible tasting savoury pastry plaits?
Lesley’s take on a Hollywood classic was a hit, with Paul admiring the colour, structure and overall look of it but saying that it could have been improved with slightly thicker pastry to give it more flake. Prue thought the addition of the gooseberry compote was a little bit of genius.
Tom, Nataliia and Aaron were all told that their pastry was slightly underbaked. Paul found Toby’s flavours boring and Iain’s needing more punch. And Prue said if sausage rolls all tasted like Jasmine’s, she’d eat a lot more of them.
Despite his pastry being ‘a few minutes under’, Aaron received some incredible feedback for his Jamaican beef plaity – none more so than both judges taking a chunk away to eat for their lunch! Nice one, Aaron.
So did Toby pull off the full puff? Kinda. It wasn’t a disaster, but neither was it brilliant. Paul said it had some lamination but with full puff pastry you would expect double what he had achieved. So you probably put yourself through the extra stress for no additional gain there, Toby,
THE TECHNICAL: gala pie
Set by Paul, the technical challenge was a gala pie, described as a spectacular rectangular pork pie made with hot water crust pastry and a line of eggs running through the middle. They had three hours to make it, which would need to be split into roughly two equal parts of making and baking time.
As always, the technical challenge is presented to the bakers with scant instructions. Paul did tell them that they needed to be neat and precise for the recipe to work. And out of their earshot, he told us that it was vitally important they create a steam hole in the lid of the pie. Without it, the chances of pastry blowouts and soggy bottoms are waaaaaay higher.
This was shortly followed by:
Iain: “I don’t think it needs an air hole, but maybe it does?”. Yes, Iain. It does.
And Aaron: “I didn’t put a steam hole in it but I think it’s going to be OK.” No Aaron. It is not.
KNOWING WHICH WAY IS UP
Something I was surprised we didn’t see discussed or highlighted during this week’s technical was which way up your eggs need to go in the tin when you’re making a gala pie.
As a gala pie is sliced through once baked, you need to lay your eggs down horizontally in the tin so that each slice has a full ‘O’ of yolk. If you put them in vertically, you’ll end up with a line of yolk.
I’m not entirely convinced there wasn’t some ‘selective’ footage during both the baking and the judging on this one 😉
Call me a cynic, if you will.
If you’re going for the full aesthetic with a gala pie, you also need to trim the egg white ends off before placing them in the tin. This means that you won’t end up with a slice that is all white with no yolk. The beady-eyed amongst y’all would have spotted during the judging that Lesley didn’t know this 😉
LEAF IT OUT, PAUL
So what did the judges make of the seven gala pies waiting for them on the gingham altar?
Well first off, Paul seemed to have a little bit of an obsession with the number of leaves the bakers had (or, more accurately, had not) decorated their pies with. I mean, in the grand scheme of things and considering it wasn’t specified exactly in the instructions…
Both Nataliia and Toby received those dreaded words that should never be said in the same sentence – soggy and pastry – in their feedback. Prue said she thought Iain’s pie looked like it had been crimped by two different people! Aaron’s was underbaked, Lesley’s was well-baked, Tom’s was a bit of a mess and Jasmine’s was robust with good flavour.
So this week’s baker at the bottom of the technical was Aaron. He did have a great signature, so slightly less worrying for him than if he’d also had a bad first round. Tom was sixth, Nataliia fifth, Toby fourth, Lesley third, Iain second and Jasmine first.
THE SHOWSTOPPER: SCULPTED TARTS
After probably two of his worst rounds in the competition so far, Tom was going to need something pretty special in the pastry showstopper to dig himself out of danger. I was also a little nervous for Toby as I can’t help thinking he’s a little under-marked and over-harshly criticised for his baking.
Anyhoo, onto the pastry week showstopper, which this year was to be visually stunning sculpted tarts. The judges were looking for great textures and flavours and beautifully sculpted tarts that showcased their engineering, design and baking skills and also told a bit of a story.
To make the task trickier, the bakers’ structures needed to be at least a foot tall and could not be made from anything other than the pastry used for their tarts. They had just four hours.
A ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS
Paul told us that this year’s pastry showstopper was an opportunity for us to be a bit nosey and dig around in the lives of the bakers.
Aaron had other ideas, however, as he told us that he didn’t really want to say on camera what his sculpture was because he would then be admitting to something that had been a secret for years. Relenting eventually, he let out to millions of viewers that his ‘Nobody Gnomes’ tart was based on his antics with a friend and the period of time where they used to move his friend’s mum’s gnome around the garden without her knowing [until now!] 😂
Toby told us that he used to work at a theme park and spent some considerable time trying to tame a goat called Milly that lived underneath a rollercoaster there. He thought he had achieved it – only to be rammed by her 😂
MASTERING THE [T]ART OF PASTRY SCULPTURES IN JUST FOUR HOURS
Yes Toby, that’s four hours and not the four and a half hours you thought you were getting. Kudos for pulling it back, though!
And with Tom’s two biggest fears being structural pastry and Paul Hollywood, how did he – and the rest of the bakers get on?
Lesley delighted the judges with her ‘exquisite’ pastry bees and the depth of flavour of her honey-glazed pecan tart. Aaron divided the judges with his use of jasmine extract – which Paul didn’t like but Prue said was nice although she couldn’t eat much of it.
Ian’s retelling of the story of how the Giant’s Causeway came to be was a hit, described as detailed, clever and a great work of art. Although Prue did say that she thought he’d gone a bit OTT with the whiskey (and we all know that Prue likes her boozy bakes!)
Despite having half an hour less than he thought, Toby managed to pull off his pastry rollercoaster showstopper. His pastry was considered ‘exceptional’, although his structure was a little on the wonky side.
Nataliia’s sculpted swans were a visual triumph but the judges thought her pastry was too thick, overworked and a bit on the tough side. Jasmine’s sculpted tree looked like something you’d seen in a professional patisserie shop window according to Paul, although her tart was missing a texture (like a curd or jam) and was a little on the dry side.
And Tom needn’t have worried about either Paul or the structural pastry as he got a ‘Tom’s back in the tent’ for his Connect Four pastry sculpture.
FAREWELL TO THE SIXTH BAKER OF THE CLASS OF 2025
I thought this was a pretty tough one to predict this week as nobody had a total car crash week and while there were some issues in the signature and technical, everybody put up a great pastry showstopper.
I feared for Toby a little because, as I mentioned earlier, I think he’s judged a little harshly sometimes. Thankfully, those fears were baseless 🙂
The judges’ discussions with Alison and Noel centred around Nataliia and Aaron at the bottom. Tom saved himself from joining them with his great showstopper. Jasmine and Lesley were both in line for star baker after having three great rounds each.
Sadness for Nataliia as she became the sixth baker to leave the tent.
And a third star baker crown for Jasmine this week. Unquestionably well-deserved as she’s exceptionally talented, but I so very much wanted Lesley to get it this week. Let meringue week be yours, Lesley!
Until next week!
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