Butter knives at the ready – it’s Bread Week!
Ten bakers, three challenges and one judge who knows *everything* about bread.
I love bread week as it is [in my opinion] one of the most technical of baking disciplines and really starts to show those bakers who shine beyond the design capabilities that cake and biscuit week demand of them.
It was all to play for Pui Man and Aaron this week, who didn’t have the best of results during Biscuit Week and flirted near the bottom come elimination time.
Could Toby hold on to his title of Technical Toby after winning the challenge two weeks on the bounce? And how would Tom cope with the pressure of going into Bread Week as reigning star baker?
Are you ready to dive in? On your marks. Get set. BAKE!
**** SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the outcomes of each of the challenges, this week’s star baker and the third of The Class of 2025 to go home. Please don’t read on if you have yet to watch the bread week episode and don’t want to know the outcome! ****
TIME TO RISE TO THE CHALLENGE
Unless you are making quick breads (unleavened or chemically-leavened breads like flatbreads and wraps), then you need to set aside quite a few hours if you plan to make bread. Successfully.
But this is Bake Off, where sensible timescales are so last year.
So shall we see how many times ‘under-proofed’ features in the feedback during this week’s judging?…
THE SIGNATURE: SAVOURY MONKEY BREAD
We just can’t seem to get away from challenges that have a strong focus on design in this year’s Bake Off, and tonight seems to be no different.
For the signature, the bakers were asked to make a ‘well-flavoured’ savoury pull-apart monkey bread, which needed to be ‘visually striking’ through the use of coloured, flavoured doughs, glazes, coatings or toppings.
This type of brief usually catches at least one of the bakers out, who can’t resist the urge to throw everything but the kitchen sink at their bake.
MONKEY BUSINESS
The bakers were given three hours to complete Bread Week’s signature challenge. Paul said that the proofing was what would make or break this challenge. I’m fairly sure that’s true of any bake involving a yeasted dough, but hey ho!
Some really interesting flavour combinations from the contestants in this challenge. I really loved the sound of Toby’s umami-fest of Parmesan, porcini and pesto. Yes please! Blue cheese featured in quite a few of the bakes, which is not surprising as it packs a fair old punch. Tom’s croque monsieur and steak with peppercorn dough balls sounded delicious but his French onion soup, not so much (a bit too sweet for my taste).
GO APE FOR THE FLAVOURS
So what did the judges make of their flavour combinations? And was three hours enough to turn out a well-proved, well-baked monkey bread?
Nadia’s bread was deemed ‘rough and ready’ for its appearance but spot on for its flavours. Tom, Jessika and Iain also impressed with their flavour combinations, but Toby split the judges with Paul finding his flavours lacking while Prue found them absolutely delicious.
Nataliia’s bread was too sweet, Lesley’s needed more Stilton (even after she bumped up the cheese content from 120g to 160g after Paul questioned her on whether 120g was enough during his early tour around the tent) and Jasmine’s needed more olives.
Pui Man forgot to glaze her monkey bread, which resulted in the judges describing her bake as dull to look at. They said it also lacked salt. Aaron’s dough balls didn’t rise, which led to some pretty damning feedback. The texture of his bread was ‘so awful that you couldn’t eat it.’ Fair play to Aaron, though, who conceded that the judges’ words were a lot kinder than his bake deserved.
A few of the bakers were told that their bread could have done with proving for a little longer, but overall nothing catastrophic (with the exception of Aaron), so the time set for the challenge seemed to be about right this time.
THE TECHNICAL: GLAZED RING DOUGHNUTS
Mmmmmm, doughnuts. I must admit I’m more of a filled, jammy doughnut gal than a glazed ring doughnut one, but I’d fight you for it if that was the only one on offer 😉
The technical was introduced as a ‘fast food classic’. Now, as a baker of many years, I have to interject here and say that there is nothing fast about making a yeasted doughnut! It’s a time-consuming process and is a bake that needs eating within a few hours of completion, which is why I don’t sell them – even though they’re one of the things coeliacs miss the most.
Two hours and forty-five minutes, a deep fat fryer and minimal instructions to make 12 glazed doughnuts – six with a simple vanilla glaze and six with a strawberry glaze. Let’s do this!
A HOLE LOTTA LOVE
Yeasty, pillowy-soft, sugary-sweet rings of deep fried deliciousness. Hoo yes.
The secret to the signature pale band around the middle of the doughnut is in the proofing time. But of course the instructions for the technical bake didn’t include details of how long to proof the doughnuts for 😉
The bakers also had multiple round cutters on their workbenches, so it was left to them to decide which to use. As we saw from Prue and Paul’s chat about the challenge, this was clearly designed to test whether they knew that picking a ‘hole’ cutter too small would result in the doughnut hole closing up.
Some of the bakers looked a little daunted by the deep fat fryer on their benches. Jasmine, for one, said she had never used one before.
DOUGHNUT JUDGE ME
Unfortunately for the contestants, the walk of shame to the gingham altar for judging is a necessary part of the technical challenge! So how did they get on?
Arriving at the altar, both Prue and Paul exclaimed ‘that’s a lot of doughnuts.’ Umm, you set the challenge…do the maths….10 bakers x 12 doughnuts is 120 doughnuts. Yup, that’s a lot of doughnuts 😂
I always think that the judges must not look at the bakers when blind judging the technical because it’s so obvious from their reactions who has baked what!
This week was far less of a disaster than the technicals of cake and biscuit week. Nataliia, Iain, Nadia and Jasmine all received positive comments. Damning with faint praise (‘acceptable’) for Tom and not good at all for both Lesley and Pui Man.
At the start of the technical, Pui Man told us that she’s made doughnuts many times and so should be OK. If you’ve ever seen The Apprentice, you’ll know that when candidates who go for the project manager job because the task is ‘their thing’, it never ends well. Clearly the same is true on Bake Off 😢
THE SHOWSTOPPER: TIERED SWEET BREADS
Heading into the showstopper, Pui Man, Nataliia and Aaron were in the minds and on the lips of the judges as bakers who’d not had a good day and therefore needed to up their game in the final challenge of bread week. And It was Nadia and Jasmine who seemed at this stage to be in the mix for star baker.
The tiered sweet bread challenge was going to need to be pretty special in both looks and taste for some of the Class of 2025 then!
SAY IT WITH BREAD
This year’s Bread Week showstopper challenge was a celebratory sweet bread with at least three tiers, made from an enriched bread dough with a design to represent a celebration that had meaning to the bakers – in five hours.
Prue described it as like a wedding cake – but made out of bread. And Paul said he wanted to see beautifully flavoured and well-baked loaves that really showed off the bakers’ skills.
BAKED WITH LOVE
Aaron chose a ‘celebration of life’ sweet bread in memory of two friends he had lost in recent years, which he made from a four-tier couronne filled with pistachio, marzipan, cherries and apricots. Keeping to the French bread theme, Nadia baked a brioche tiered wedding cake with a raspberry crème pâtissière.
Iain hoped to spook the judges with his celebration of the Irish precursor to Halloween – Samhain. Sticking with an autumn theme, Tom’s tiered bread was a three-tiered cinnamon bun tower with chocolate decorations to celebrate his boyfriend’s favourite time of year.
Toby was surely onto a winner with his Christmas-themed stollen-flavoured tiered bread – I mean, who doesn’t love Christmas and stollen (don’t even look at me, marzipan haters 😝).
A FULL ON FIVE HOURS
This was quite an intense five hours for the bakers as they first had to make their doughs ready for bulk fermentation, then shape them ready for the second proof before baking them and allowing them to cool for long enough before stacking and finishing off with their chosen decorations.
There were buttercream roses, sugarpaste flowers, dough skulls, chocolate trees, sugar lace and more all being created in the tent, ready to adorn their doughy tiered creations.
Clearly there was enough time for the showstopper challenge this week as Jasmine even had time to spare to fire sugarpaste octopus (left over sugarpaste daisies!) at an unsuspecting Tom who was huddled over his modelling chocolate, desperately trying to make it look less phalic and more like a tree 😂
WHO CRUMBLED UNDER THE PRESSURE OF BREAD WEEK?
Time for the final judging of Bread Week. Eep, a hard one to predict!
Jasmine’s midsummer flower crown was such a pretty bake! Beautiful, delicate and spot on were some of the comments from Paul and Prue. A bit wonky but looks very good was how Paul described Toby’s Christmas-themed sweet bread. Even though the bread was a little stodgy and under-baked, Prue said it was the best tasting stollen she had ever had.
Tom’s nod to autumn was both dramatic and bold and the judges loved his orange, cinnamon and pecan flavours. Jasmine’s design and presentation was a little clumsy but her bake was lovely, although Paul thought she could have done more with the flavours.
Prue loved the look of Lesley’s bread and both judges thought she did a good job on both the look and the bake. Nataliia’s showstopper was highly decorated but clumsy and the dough was claggy because it was, you’ve guessed it, under-proved. And both judges loved Nadia’s bread wedding cake. But the excessive use of red colouring – not so much 😂
FAREWELL TO THE THIRD BAKER OF THE CLASS OF 2025
Heading into the showstopper, it looked like Pui Man was on the ropes, but she seemed to pull it back with her coconut cocktail wedding cake sweet bread and Prue even described her as the comeback kid.
During discussions between the judges and Alison and Noel, both Iain and Nataliia looked vulnerable as neither had a particularly great showstopper and had not faired brilliantly in previous rounds (Iain 6th and Nataliia 8th in the technical).
But it wasn’t to be for Pui Man and she became the third baker to be sent home from the tent in series 16 of The Great British Bake Off.
Congratulations to Jasmine for becoming Bread Week 2025’s star baker, you should justifiably be happy that you got star baker this week, your bakes were outstanding 🙂
Until next week!
