GBBO 4th thread - Will it be Ruby Tuesday in Final Week?..

[Myimaginarycathasfleas]

...or will Kim Joy claim the title? Will Rahul nail it with a bake they DO have in India?

It’s anyone’s to lose.

well yes he could have taffeta but he didn't

but by your argument you're basically saying all the bakes should be british and anyone from a different culture shouldn't bring anything from their heritage to it which I think is crap.

I don’t mind Rahul, but I don’t believe that he didn’t know what a doughnut was.

I’ve been reflecting on the style-over-substance way the show has been moving. This series has been extreme, but it was already going in that direction when it was on the Beeb IMO. Competent, experienced bakers aren’t being chosen as contestants any more. It’s all about the life stories.

I’d love to see a technical where they lifted the tea towel and found nothing at all except a message saying “make a Madeira cake”.

I’d make them find their ingredients a la sewing bee and use their baking knowledge to produce the cake. It’s the sort of test that would sort the wheat from the chaff. My guess is none of last nights finalists would have got very far.

I’d love to see a technical where they lifted the tea towel and found nothing at all except a message saying “make a Madeira cake"

yes this! because then we would know who actually had some baking experience. when they set them totally random things and nobody knows what they are, it really only shows who's best at guessing when to take stuff out of the oven and how to interpret the "instructions"

to me it doesn't demonstrate who is actually better at baking

Showstopper comments:

Ruby
Good: very nice shortbread with good flavour
Mushrooms good and beautiful flavour
Beautiful sponge with good flavour combo
good creme pat and choux pastry

Bad: quite bitter inside choux

overall - looks good, tastes good (except Choux filling)

Rahul
Good: Looks impressive
Stepping stones and dip: delicious
Good flavour on choux
lovely jacond excellent flavour
good cake - delicious

Bad: doens't make mouth water
Choux buns look hideous

Overall: Tastes good, looks grim

Kim Joy
Good:
Original, colourful and delicate
Ginger cake delicious and well baked
nice caramel.
Nice ginger biscuit

Bad:
Not very high cake
Not sure about orange with ginger.
Could have done a different flavour ginger biscuit
Missing a trick, fall a bit flat

overall: Looks Okay, tastes OK

So from comments (based on actual baking/flavour)
1st: Ruby
2nd: Rahul
3rd: Kim joy.

So over all across all challenges:
(1st place gets 3 points, 2nd 2 points, 3rd 1 point)
Kim Joy placed 1st, 1st, 3rd (3+3+1 = 7 points)
Rahul placed: 3rd, 2nd, 2nd (1+2+2- 5 points)
Ruby placed: 2nd, 3rd, 1st (2+1+3 = 6 points)

So KIM JOY SHOULD HAVE BLOODY WON!!!!

but by your argument you're basically saying all the bakes should be british and anyone from a different culture shouldn't bring anything from their heritage to it which I think is crap

I didn’t say that at all!!!!

I said she was binned as she made French stuff in Danish week

yes but you also said

It’s the great British Bake Off, not French

She did French every week

Rahul has only lived here 7 years but wasn’t doing Indian every week

they said her Danish was more French, but to be honest she did make Danish pastry, just didn't fill it.

I still think it being edible is much more important than going slightly off task

Agree with Flaming. Surely it's called the GBBO because it's the British version of the show? If that weren't the case they wouldn't be baking Danish, Austrian, French bakes (to name a few) in the first place would they?

And anyway, cooks have always borrowed from other cultures right back to the Romans. Cakes and pastries that we now consider typically British often have their origins elsewhere and Brits are renowned for embracing other food cultures after all. It's hard to make any sort of patisserie without encountering classic French methods and flavour combinations. Eclairs with choux pastry (origin French/Italian) and creme pat anyone? Equally hard to ignore German bread-making traditions and Belgian chocolate work - just a few examples. The (sadly missed) food history/travel sections used to explain all this. I like the variety!

There were gazillions of comments upthread about the British bit of the title if you can be bothered to read back

[sigh]

Manon was binned as she didn’t follow the brief. End of.

neither did Rahul, surely part of the brief is for your baking to be edible?

He tried to follow the brief

She failed to bake anything Danish

I don't agree with that though, a pastry doesn't become French instead of Danish because its not filled with something the judges like.

he failed to bake anything I could eat, which renders it all a total waste of time really.

She baked French bread not rye bread for the smorrebrod brief, which must’ve pissed off the judges

I wonder if the editing is a bit buggered this year?

The Danish/French thing is debatable though.

Danish pastry is what the French call Viennoiserie, the German have is as Plunder Kuchen or Franzbrötchen and so on. It's all the same thing, it's not like it's "Danish" in a special way.

Paul just wanted her out, for whatever reason.

Also, yesterdays brief was for Doughnuts, what part of that means buttercream roses as decoration? Glase, yes, but that wasn't a glaze.

So it seems briefs are flexible when it suits.

Manon was robbed.

Doughnuts. Gulab jamun is a ubiquitous Indian sweet that everyone encounters at some point, even here in UK. Small doughnuts in a sugar syrup. I refuse to believe that Rahul has never tried one.

did they say exactly what made it French though?!

Fuzzy, I think the Sewing Bee is back next year, but I don't know any more specifically.

wherewolf, I know, me too

Re Rahul's 'wife' comment, I don't think he's married. I think it was just a joke around the idea of people misinterpreting things and thinking 'affair'.

Doughnuts - deep frying
Pita bread dips - campfire cooking
Showstopper dessert - a pudding

Where's the baking?

For the doughnuts and pita bread they had to make the dough. Choux pastry isn't done in an oven but in a pan, but still counts as baking. And they often make things to fill/accompany the main item.

The showstoppers all included biscuits and/or cake. They weren't just puddings.

Before the show I thought Ruby would win; she's been so consistent. But she had a bad weekend and none of her stuff was as competent as usual.

I'd have liked Kim-Joy to win after the first two bakes, but I agreed with the judges that her showstopper was a missed opportunity – just some bits laid out on a tray. Even the decoration wasn't up to her usual exquisite standards. Rahul saved himself with his showstopper and I'm quite happy that he won.

I missed Terry. I wonder why he wasn't there and why we didn't get an update about him?

I said to my DH and DC that Rahul had been saved in the past 2 weeks when he clearly had lost the plot and couldn't take the pressure. Going into the final I also said that I felt PaulH wanted him to win.

Surprise, surprise!!!!! It was a fix. He actually came last by my calculations. Going into the finals Ruby was the strongest and if anyone was going to be given it irrespective of how crap their bakes were it should have been her. Kim Joy did the best in the final. I even felt they were deliberately negative about her show stopper just to justify who they wanted to give it to. Her Atlantis was actually recognisable unlike Rahul's which looked like something a sick dragon would vomit up.

I am not watching it again if they are not going to be fair to the person who deserves it.

I think the points are probably shared between following the brief and being edible and looking good aren't they? Tries to be diplomatic.

Taffeta my post was partly in response to those comments down thread ie "more emphasis on BRITISH please"! (Although I do agree there could be more emphasis on the BAKE bit.)

Flaming I do think that Manon was probably at a cultural disadvantage because the French are quite (mahoosive generalisation coming up for which I apologise) traditional when it comes to the use of ingredients, so her range of experience may have been more limited, but I do think Rahul did better and tried harder when cooking outside of his cultural comfort zone as it were.

Tbh, I think all three of the finalists had quite even strengths and weaknesses. Once Briony left I didn't really mind who won! My one reservation would be "did the glass jar explode from the ambient heat in the tent" or did Rahul have it too close to a heat source in which case he would have been partially responsible? Over invested or what.

Choux pastry is mixed in a saucepan, but it's then baked in an oven.

I think doughnuts are fine and should have a place on GBBO - they're hard so fair enough for them to be in the final.

pitta bread also fine, and has a place somewhere on GBBO, not in the final, and not on a sodding campfire. it made it a bit of a joke, and took away the technical element because its obviously not something anyone would do at home, and doesn't actually use any of there expertise, it was just a "lets give it a go and guess what we have to do" which was pointless.

I just thought the idea for the showstopper was shit, it did give them the chance to show that they could make both a cake and a biscuit, but you could have chosen something that would have been more aesthetically pleasing than a "landscape" they all looked gross.

That's v interesting about Danish pastry Chardonnay and agree about the buttercream icing!

Heigh ho! It was a hard one to judge that's for sure!

I'm looking forward to the Sewing Bee returning! Does anyone know when it will be on?

www.facebook.com/147635825320083/posts/1937406369676344/

Not sure if this link will work, but sadly it explains Terry’s absence.

Well, it all goes back to Vienna and the battle there with the Ottoman army, history not being my strong point, no idea when, but the Turks brought their love for sweet things and after they lost the battle the Viennese bakers started baking pastries in the shape of a half moon, to celebrate the victory, half moon being the symbol of the Ottoman Empire, to go with the coffee they also borrowed from the Turks.

The pastries spread all over Europe later.

I think Vanilla and wowfudge are on to something with their sleb line up.

I might go for The Other Duchess just for drama, but either would do.
I'm guessing James Jordan will have a slot in his calendar
I feel I could see more of Gemma Collins in the kitchen
yy to Sean(n)

Chardonnay thanks, my knowledge of Ottoman empire is very rusty I must admit (although I do remember reading about the significance of the crescent shape somewhere). There are some interesting snippets in Elizabeth David's cookery books but I must seek out a good specific food history book on the subject! It really is fascinating!