The Great British Baking Show Recap: What I Like About Choux

The Great British Baking Show
Pastry Week
Season 17 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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I hate to lurch right out of the gate with the obvious baking pun, but didn’t Pastry Week fall a little flat? I feel like I had a bit more fun watching Léa Seydoux refuse to eat various croissants than watching this episode. The bakers seem to have many triumphs, which I think is usually a hallmark of a great episode, but from the onset the editors are clearly telegraphing who is going home and who is going to be Star Baker yet again. Everyone is having fun and (nearly) everyone is triumphant, but the episode is lacking the suspense that we usually get from a good reality television program.

The first challenge is for the bakers to make eight hand-held pies, which are ubiquitous in English bakeries. (I know Gail’s is basic, but their chicken, ham, and tarragon hand pie is basically delicious.) Many of the bakers are making a version of the “pasty” (with a short A so it rhymes with “nasty,” which they decidedly are not). Also known as the Cornish pasty, they come from Cornwall, the temperate and beachy region in England’s extreme Southwest. They’re sort of like a giant empanada, but the crust is pinched together on one edge and crimped or braided into a thick closure that functioned something like a handle. The idea was that farmers and miners (anyone who has watched Poldark knows Cornwall was famous for its mines) could hold the braid with their hands and eat their lunches without utensils since they were leagues underground trying not to die extracting undersea copper. Also, because their hands were filthy, they could then throw the remainder of the crust to the crows. (While we’re on the subject of the Cornish, do not ask them about Cornish Game Hens. They are an American invention, and they will all laugh at you if you bring them up. Not like I know this from experience or anything.)

In the judging, we are close to two handshakes. Connie’s pasties, inspired by Jamaican patties and filled with jerk chicken, get praised by Paul, Nigella, and Allison, who seems to be angling to take over Paul’s job when he quits in a huff because people like Nigella more. Tom makes pasties inspired by banh mi, the delicious Vietnamese sandwich. Paul has never had a banh mi and, when he admits that, Tom says it’s a bit embarrassing, and he has never been more right about a single thing in his life. When Paul tries his first one, he says the spice is fantastic, and Nigella can’t get enough. Moyin’s Nigerian meat pie is so good that Allison also has to get a taste in, and you can almost see Paul swat her hand away from trying it with his eyes. 

The one who struggles the most is Clara, who makes venison pies that look like deer. As the judges explain to her how badly they could go, you know those antlers are going to be a failure. Because of their fiddly shape, they are about as full as a vegan at an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet. Mo’s take on a samosa looks bright green, which is never a good idea for food unless it is a Jolly Rancher. (The thought of a Jolly Rancher handpie makes me think of that kombucha meme? Gross. But maybe! No.) Nigella tells him it’s too “gungy,” which is an English word for slime and is also a very uniquely British kink.

The judges don’t love Gabe’s Bostin Brummie Balti Pie, and American viewers probably have no idea what any of those words are other than “pie.” “Bostin” is West Midlands slang for something that is great, like how people in Boston (no relation) say “wicked.” “Brummie” is what you call someone or something from Birmingham, England’s second-largest city, which is in the West Midlands and is where Gabe lives and Allison is from. A “Balti pie” is a Birmingham staple that combines a usual English meat pie but with a filling typical of a curry, which is why Gabe’s are made with lamb, spices, mango chutney, and colonialism. I have never had one because they’re often served at football — sorry, soccer — games, and I do not go to those. Also, every person I’ve ever met from Birmingham says, “Don’t go, it’s terrible.” Not even for the Bostin Brummie Balti pies? (Don’t you feel smart now that you get that?) 

The bakers all do similarly well at the technical challenge, which is solid but uninspired. Nigella tasks them with making a Karpatka, a Polish dessert that no one has ever heard of. But Nigella is right in her introduction. While it is unfamiliar, they should all be familiar with the components: two big slaps of choux pastry with vanilla custard in the middle. If these bakers haven’t made choux and custard, how did they even get an invitation to the tent in the first place? While everyone seems confident in what they’re doing, Clara’s Karpatka ends up not rising. Her choux ends up being flat. (Oh, and you thought you would escape without one terrible shoe pun. Actually, that was two-thirds of a pun. P. U.) 

After the technical, it’s clear that Tom or Connie is going to be the winner and that Clara or Mo is going home, unless something miraculous or disastrous occurs. I’m suitably impressed by both Connie and Gary in this year’s competition. They both fulfil the archetype of an older baker who hews a little too close to the classics and might not be as tidy as some of the other bakers. However, they’ve both defied that, turning both their knowledge bases and tidiness into strengths and lasting far longer in the competition than their archetype usually does. 

The showstopper is to make a free-standing pie without using any pans, which is such a simple but, er, challenging challenge that I am impressed with the assignment for the third time in one episode. The result is seven amazing-looking P to the I to the E, PIES! (It’s still stuck in my head.) Even Clara’s, which is cracked, looks great. Nigella says, up close, it’s not that great, since she sprinkled edible glitter on it and it all settled into the cracks. Nigella, as relatable as ever, says that is what happens as you age and apply powder to your face. All the women (and Tom and Gabe) nod in agreement; everyone gets what she’s saying. There is a groundswell of love and support even as Clara’s sun- and moon-shaped apple pie really dissatisfies the judges, and we all know that the inevitable has come true: Clara, one of the frontrunners, is going home. 

The judges are also unimpressed with Moyin’s Nigerian mask-inspired apple pie, tanking what was otherwise a good week for him. Even still, all the pies look as beautiful as Nigella, powder in the cracks or no. Mo’s multicolored butterfly is like a stunning bit of stained glass, even though it was overbaked and underfilled. Gabe’s is shaped like his napping dog and looks just like it, but Paul says it’s too dry even if Nigella disagrees. Connie’s sweet potato curry pie is inspired by a pet snake named Dave and looks like a delicious little cartoon. Gary makes a fish pie that looks like a fish because he is the most creative person in the tent. Still, it is prettier than Brad Pitt fishing in A River Runs Through It. Tom is similarly inspired by making a Mexican chicken pie shaped like one of the chickens from the movie Chicken Run, even though he isn’t allowed to say the title, just like we’re not allowed to call it Bake Off.

It comes out of the oven like a little bit of ingenuity and looks exactly like the cartoon but also shockingly appetizing. He presents it to the judges, and they have their first bite. Nigella lavishes this chicken with praise, and Paul feels the pressure. He feels the love she’s getting, the uneasy pang of people disagreeing with him, the camaraderie of talking about the difficulties of aging as a woman in society. He feels it all slipping away from him — the power, the control, the show — and he does the only thing he can. He approaches Tom, naturally Star Baker, for the third time, with his hand extended, not in congratulations, but to pull it all back toward him.