r/GreatBritishBakeOff • u/Due-Oil8955 • 9h ago
Help/Question That flatbread technical should be embarrassing for everyone involved
One baker having a disaster is understandable. Two or three having a bad day is hardly unusual. But when so many contestants are handing in undercooked flatbreads, it starts to make you question the whole challenge. Was the timing unrealistic, were the instructions unclear, or did the bakers simply underestimate it?
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u/zoosmo 9h ago
Aaron from 2025 has a reel about this! He found the original recipe in one of Paul’s old books…and in the book they’re short and fat and look pretty much like what these bakers produced. So assuming the bakers’ instructions were a pared-down version of what’s in the book, it shouldn’t be a surprise they came out looking the same, too.
He’s @buymeanicecream
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u/zoosmo 8h ago
My new head canon/conspiracy theory is that Paul for whatever reason wasn’t able to correct the book photos before they were published, and has had beef all these years with the recipe testers and photographers that made them short and fat. He wanted this challenge to be an I-told-you-so kind of redemption, but it turns out his instructions were the problem all along.
OR he just doesn’t remember his recipe.
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u/No_Name_Only_Vibes 5h ago
Or as it's been 15-years since the recipe originally appeared in 'How to Bake', and in that time he's practised them so often that he's refined the technique to something a bit different to the original. In the book it said to rest the dough for at least an hour, but I'm assuming he now calls for 15-mins because they're thin enough that any longer isn't necessary.
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u/FantasticBuddies 9h ago edited 9h ago
I think production and the bakers are all at fault here. Yes, not knowing that flatbreads are supposed to be flat was bad but I think had the instructions been “roll to 10 inches”, we could’ve seen better results, I think the filling threw them off tbh.
If one person fails the bakes, then that’s on them, but if everyone fails, that’s on the judges/instructions.
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u/Gerbilpapa 9h ago
I usually agree with this sentiment
But the clue is in the name of the dish
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u/Queen_beeeeee 9h ago
Agreed. Plus none of them had the common sense to think 'I only have a short time left to bake these, I need to make them thin so they cook on time'.
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u/xeozim 8h ago
Much easier to have this common sense as someone watching the show. The timings on the challenges are often quite tight so predictably everyone rushes into doing something and doesn't take the time to think.
I'd like to see the timings relaxed or maybe give them 5 minutes at the start to think and make notes.
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u/onlymodestdreams 2h ago
I liked this season's first technicals where five minutes to think and plan was built right in. Of course nothing is stopping the competitors from doing this on their own every time except for the pressure of the show (which I do not discount! I could never do this!)
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u/xeozim 1h ago
Yeah the calmness to do that while everyone else is chucking ingredients around is hard to come by! Even if it wasn't explicit it would be good if the production team suggested they do a bit of up front planning, but I expect they think it makes better TV if it's more chaotic...
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u/onlymodestdreams 1h ago
It would be especially hard in the short technicals (but the most valuable!)
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u/Sex_And_Candy_Here 53m ago
In a 1 hour challenge, taking a 5 minute pause to plan burns 8% of your total time. That’s a pretty decent amount when usually there’s just barely enough time to do the technical.
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u/onlymodestdreams 25m ago
True! But losing time in the middle because of a false start would also burn up precious time
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u/wosmo 7h ago
The instructions don't tell them they only have a short time, though. They have 'rest' and 'fry' with zero indication of dividing the time between them.
That's the kinda thing where I feel like this one had one clue too few. If you know they're supposed to cook in 5 minutes, you should be able to figure out they need to be thin enough to only need 5 minutes. Or if they're told what size they should be, they can work out that they'll fry fast from that.
The whole setup where the instructions are "make it, bake it" feel like they only work if at least one baker in the tent has any idea what the end result is meant to look like.
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u/No_Name_Only_Vibes 5h ago
The instructions don't tell them they only have a short time, though.
They were told they had 1-hour to complete the technical. It was up to the bakers how long they needed to rest the dough, then cook them in the pan. Being given an hour, should be enough indication that the resting and cooking times are short.
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u/axw3555 6h ago
It was a short technical.
If the challenge is short, you have a short time to cook. That’s basic common sense.
And know what it’s meant to look like? It’s not some exotic cake from 500 years ago, it’s a flatbread. You’re telling me no one there has seen a naan? Or hummus with a flatbread for dipping?
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u/DamphairCannotDry 8h ago
yes but the name of filling is... filling. It should've been incorporated dough. They made it... a filling so it all had to be thicker to accommodate.
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u/Sex_And_Candy_Here 55m ago
A lot of their bakes looked basically the same as Paul’s original recipe the challenge was based on. If Paul would describe it as a flatbread (which is correct, flat bread doesn’t mean ultra thin) then it’s reasonable that the bakers did too.
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u/Gerbilpapa 46m ago
I’ve seen the photos - it’s different than the example but it’s still wider and thinner (and probably baked for longer as it wasn’t under a timer) than the showstopper
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u/francesniff 4h ago
Normally I would agree with this.
But pretty much everyone had a terrible week with seemingly no one knowing how to make bread so it does feel like a skill issue unrelated to the tasks.
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u/LowApricot1668 3h ago
This season is not great skill wise which is the entire premise of this show. Many more flops than triumphs and no one is really doing anything amazing.
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u/Sad-Nectarine-7855 9h ago
It baffles me how some of them had never even eaten flat bread before, more so that none of them actually made a flat bread
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u/Wonderful_Citron_518 7h ago
Once they read the cooking instructions “fry”
that should have clued them in immediately that it was going to be v thin. You can’t/don’t fry thick items, no one has ever fried their scones. That in combination with the short amount of time given. (Even allowing for the fact it was just an hour, which was definitely a little short).
They’re assuming bakers will use their knowledge and work stuff out. And if they’d have worked all that out, that would told them slice the grapes thinly not halve them. I think they all just had a brain freeze over what a flat bread was and then panic ensued.
If they’d use their knowledge and remembered crepes are thin and large and flat , cook quickly or that peshwari naans (which is basically what they were asked to cook) are fairly large and flat and you can set dry fry them in a v hot pan, they’d have gotten this straight away. I suspect Paul thought the hard part would be them having to make allowances for the fact they had a moist filling not a dry filling like peshwari and that might catch them out. Not what a flatbread even was !
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u/kneetouchbeerdebt 6h ago
I think part of the problem may have been that none of them had the experience or knowledge with bread to be able to work it out. In the week 1 technical, Tom didn't know how to make a coffee and walnut cake, but he knew how to make a vanilla sponge and improvise from there. None of them had that confidence or knowledge to do that here, even though a flatbread is really basic stuff.
Some of them seemed like they had never seen a flatbread before!
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u/Fun_Stage825 4h ago
I'm very surprised that some expressed that they didn't know what a flatbread was. I think the problem is rather than the term encompasses a lot of different things. A bannock (which is quite thick and fried in a skillet) is a traditional British flatbread. Apparently the original recipe from Paul's cookbook was also thicker, but was adjusted for the challenge. I can't really blame the bakers for not understanding why anyone would add roasted grapes to a thin flatbread.
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u/gnaark 3h ago
fried chicken is thin now?! Have you seen what they fry in Texas
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u/Wonderful_Citron_518 3h ago
I never once mentioned chicken anywhere in my post?! Are you replying to the correct one?
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u/gnaark 3h ago
it is a thick item people fry
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u/One-Permission1917 3h ago
You’re in the bake-off subreddit, she was talking about frying thick baked goods, didn’t know that would need to be explicitly stated.
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u/Cultural-Ambition211 8h ago
The bakers were clearly copying each other and did it wrong.
It’s a flat bread. The clue is in the name.
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u/AffectionateLion9725 9h ago
I don't think that the timings were unrealistic - I regularly bake eight flatbreads at a time and it takes about 20 minutes start to finish. But roasted grapes and blue cheese?
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u/janiestiredshoes 9h ago
I mean, I think it is the fillings that threw them off - if someone told me to make a "filled flatbread", I think I'd also be confused about what was intended by that.
I'd be wondering how the grapes are going to end up inside and not poking out, whereas the grapes were definitely poking out of the example flatbreads that the judges were sampling - they were almost more like mix-ins, it seemed to me, than a proper "filling."
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u/Fibro-Mite 9h ago
My first thought was a pitta that then had to be split after cooking and then stuffed with roasted honeyed grapes and blue cheese. I'd probably have done something like that or, as I think I mentioned elsewhere, rolled out 16 thin rounds and spread the filling between two before rolling flatter/thinner and then cooking one at a time.
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u/starfishwantscoffee 9h ago
I thought the same - that they’d be cooked and then stuffed.
I’d definitely have messed it up trying to mix all that crumbly and wet in to the dough 😂.•
u/-Po-Tay-Toes- 6h ago
I'd just think of a peshwari naan. They're pretry thin and filled. Shit even a pitta is thin and you can fill them.
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u/alex_3410 8h ago
My wife was watching this (I was reading, only half paying attention), and when this cropped up, I was interested in how to do it as I make flatbreads a lot (plain). It was the "stuffed" description that didnt fit the example, they should have just called them "grape and blue cheese flat breads" instead of stuffed.
What was annoying is everyone clearly got it wrong, so I was hoping for a this is what you should have done. Does anyone have a good recipe for this? Keen to give flavoured flatbreads a try.
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u/starofdeltora 2h ago
You do technically stuff them. You are supposed to roll them out a bit, put the filling on top, fold the edges in to cover the filling, pinch to seal, then reroll very thinly. I made them (with a different filling - didn't have grapes and allergic to blue cheese) and they were great! The official recipe is online here https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/recipes/all/paul-hollywood-blue-cheese-roasted-grape-flatbreads/
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u/alex_3410 2h ago
Thank you, that makes sense, putting bits on shopping list now to give it a try!
I like the idea of different flavours, etc as well, based on what needs using up, etc.
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u/schwillton 9h ago
One student fails a test, that’s usually a shitty student. Whole class fails a test? That’s probably a shitty teacher.
I’m guessing something in the instructions was written in a way that threw them off.
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u/Ok-Salamander1708 3h ago
As a teacher, this is where my head went immediately. (In this case, the shitty teacher part might be more about the task design than the teaching, since these weren’t students obviously). I know it’s not the same situation, but a well designed task should produce at worst a smattering of results with mixed success. It’s easy for us viewers to say the bakers should have been able to produce the proper bake from the instructions given, but there was clearly a breakdown somewhere that absolutely reflects on the task itself, IMO.
That being said, I do agree that this batch of bakers clearly is much weaker at bread specifically than previous groups, and that absolutely did not help and created a perfect storm. But I think that was actually displayed more clearly in the signature and showstopper where the bread was more “typical” rather than a super thin fried bread with a wet filling and a super short time.
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u/schwillton 2h ago
Thank you! People are getting hung up on the teacher analogy I used but thank you for illustrating the point I was trying to make haha
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u/Shroomazon 8h ago
Except they're not teaching them
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u/_ribbit_ 8h ago
Haha right. It's a baking competition and the task was to produce a type of flatbread. No-one made a flatbread!!
You could argue that some flatbreads are a bit thicker, but they were putting up raw hockey pucks. Someone should have thought to cook it in time I'm going to have to make it thin!
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u/schwillton 8h ago
Yeah I guess the explanation *must* be that they’re all shitty bakers, not that the instructions were poor and they weren’t given enough time to course correct
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u/No_Name_Only_Vibes 5h ago
Actually, that is the explanation to an extent. I made a post showing the exact instructions they were given and they weren't different to any other technical. In fact, I'd call them a bit generous compared to most other technicals. It seems more a case of contestants being inexperienced in making bread, than anything else.
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u/francesniff 4h ago
Sorrt, but they're definitely all shitty bread bakers. I think only one person across all three challenges managed a proper bread texture.
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u/schwillton 1h ago
Bread week tends to be tough across all seasons but you’re right that this was a particularly weak one
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u/Whatthebake 3h ago
Normally I’d agree with this as some of their technicals have absolutely been just ridiculous and no one could succeed. But seeing as there were very few good bakes across all three challenges, I think this group just isn’t good at bread, which was surprising to see.
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u/femsci-nerd 2h ago
The last time they had flatbread in a technical challenge, they made the bakers make a fire and cook them on a flat rock. Everyone failed.
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u/coneyisland92 9h ago
Yes!
I have not yet watched the episode but I watched last week where they were given basic ingredients, and they chose sponge which was a smart choice, very easy.
How TF did the majority of them underbake a sponge?!?!?! That’s like basic baking, bread and butter, so this has not shocked me at all.
I love the show but I feel like the majority of bakers now just focus on how things look for online rather than the actual baking
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u/Particular_Meaning_5 7h ago
How can 8 so called bakers not have a clue between the lot of them, what a flatbread should look like?
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u/Spiritual_Mall_3140 7h ago
The short time period was done as a big massive clue to the bakers. Literally shouting to make them ultra thin. That's the thing everyone missed. The group just weren't clicked in at all. Any of them that served raw dough just didn't think about it.
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u/No_Name_Only_Vibes 5h ago
Entire episode, which I did enjoy, just showed this year we have contestants who don't have a lot of experience with bread unless Danni, Sharron and Nikki did, but they'd all gone.
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u/One-Permission1917 3h ago
I haven’t seen it yet (America) but they were “literally shouting to make them ultra thin”??? And no one listened??
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u/Sex_And_Candy_Here 1h ago
No, they were not told that. They are saying that the contestants being given very little time was metaphorically literally shouting at them, not literally literally shouting at them.
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u/axw3555 6h ago
The timing was fine. They were making FLAT bread. Some of the things they presented were thicker than scones.
Even if you’ve never made one, surely they’ve seen a naan or something like it. They’re big and thin. And big and thin cook fast in a pan.
Could there have been some extra detail in the recipe? Sure. Was having grapes in it a bit mean? Yeah.
But it did show up some huge gaps in the basic baking knowledge of the contestants.
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u/Lunahooks 8h ago
No. It's one thing for them not to be familiar with flatbreads (🤨), but anyone who's thought at least a little bit about baking, i.e. not just followed recipes every time, should have been skeptical about how the inside of a lump of dough was supposed to cook at that temperature and in that time.
One or two getting so flumoxed by the tricky filling that they didn't pause to have that thought, yes, that's exactly what happens in technicals, perfectly natural, panic isn't conducive to deductive reasoning. None of them even giving it the least consideration? That's not the instructions, that's on them.
The instructions even included how hot to heat the pan; that someone didn't go "huh, start at 200C and turn down, what usually happens when I bake at this temperature..." or even "this bread is feeling squishy when I prod with the spatula, I wonder why?" is a bit of a disgrace.
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u/Violet351 8h ago
The didn’t make flat bread, if they had made them larger and thinner they would have cooked but most of them were crumpet thick and too small. I think they panicked and didn’t think it through
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u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 7h ago
Recipe is here: Paul Hollywood's Blue Cheese & Roasted Grape Flatbreads recipe - The Great British Bake Off including an ultra vague "top with 5 of the roasted grapes, sliced" - even these instructions are unclear!
Needs to say 'very finely sliced' but even then, it is a serious challenge to get these thin enough with any kind of solid filling, and there are a lot of flatbread recipes out there that are sort of puffy like the ones the bakers made
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u/foramperandi 5h ago
And here is an older version of the same recipe that's much closer what they tried to make in the technical, and takes much longer: https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/stilton-grape-flatbread.pdf. If someone had done their homework and read all of Paul's cookbooks and knew this version of the recipe, they probably would have failed the technical.
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u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 3h ago
One of the bakers this year kept going on about using the judges' recipes which I don't remember seeing before?
But yeah this one just seemed unfair. And like, yeh they're called flat breads, but creme pat isn't cream, type thing
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u/KristopheH 9h ago
If one or two bakers make a big mistake, that's on them.
If all of the bakers make the same big mistake, that's on the judge who set the challenge.
They needed more time, and they needed better information.
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u/BenAtTank2 8h ago
Ordinarily id be inclined to agree with you. But this group of bakers aren't especially good, compared to previous year's at least.
If none of them could think for themselves that grapes are big round things, so maybe I'll have to make them smaller to fit into this stuffed bread then that's on them.
The technical should be setting them free on the fly to create something within the perametres of the brief. The fact none of them had enough intuition to make a success off it, frankly, speaks to their lack of skill, creativity and technical ability.
It blows my mind that even in the showstopper none of them really smashed it, and perhaps speaks to applicants/contestants just wanting to bake pretty cakes, as opposed to actually baking as a whole. I'm hoping I'm preov d wrong with desert week next week.
For what it's worth I can knock up a round of flatbreads and have them cooked in 20 mins. It's literally three ingredients, a wine bottle to roll them out, and a screaming hot pan. Hardly rocket science.
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u/Exhausted_Raven 8h ago
We can all make things easily enough when we are at home and it’s something we’ve done multiple times before. You have to take into account that they are cooking under a lot of pressure in a televised competition environment.
They were obviously all thrown by it and an hour really isn’t a lot of time with that pressure and this was the result.
They’re only human.
That said, it’s wild that they all didn’t really understand flatbreads, based on how it was edited together, but it’s done and I hope they are more successful with next week’s bakes.
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u/BenAtTank2 5h ago
Yeh that's like the whole point of the task 😂 you would assume before bread week contestants would practice baking bread.
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u/Exhausted_Raven 3h ago
Right but you’re still comparing your ability to make flatbreads at home with zero pressure. Bread week was a let down for sure but the two scenarios just don’t compare at all.
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u/CharacterWest4661 7h ago
That many bakers fo not make the same mistake. There was something wrong.
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u/axw3555 6h ago
Yeah, they all looked at what the others were doing and didn’t stop to think “what does flatbread look like?”
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u/CharacterWest4661 3h ago edited 2h ago
Well as it happens it was the time. Paul's prior versions of this recipe took far longer, according to the books, and were also somewhat fat.
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u/axw3555 3h ago
They weren't told "make paul hollywoods exact recipe". If they'd been given his full recipe, sure. But they were given a general thing for it, even if it was based on the fillings from that recipe.
But they were told "make a flatbread with this". Knowing broadly how to make a flatbread isn't a high bar.
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u/CharacterWest4661 2h ago
True. But Paul took over 5 hours and ended up with a fat bread. I am not excusing vad performance, I am highlighting the expected effort on a similar recipe, which is directly ftom Paul (as noone rose really does grapes).
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u/Sex_And_Candy_Here 48m ago
Okay but the logic of your argument is “make a dish in one hour better than the version Paul developed for his book”
You cannot expect the home bakers to be able to make a better recipe in an hour than a professional could make in several weeks of experimenting.
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u/axw3555 21m ago
No. Everyone is obsessing about Paul's book.
They may have had the same ingredients, but they weren't told "here's Paul's book, make this recipe".
They were told "here's ingredients and some loose instructions, make a flatbread".
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u/Sex_And_Candy_Here 1m ago
Okay, but that’s how Paul chose to make it originally. You cannot argue that a certain step is more intuitive if Paul literally had to change the recipe after publishing it in a book.
It’s also not reasonable argue their interpretation wasn’t flatbread if Paul made something that looked just like that and called it flatbread.
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u/Mobile_Tumbleweed_60 5h ago
Some are disagreeing but I agree with you, especially as it's only the 4th week of the show and the other technicals have been completely different.
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u/No_Name_Only_Vibes 5h ago
It was the technical challenge. That tests the bakers skills and knowledge. They've never had comprehensive instructions or a full recipe for this part of the programme.
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u/Disastrous_Egg_2251 3h ago
I don’t think it was clear enough personally and was designed to trip them up. Not all flatbreads are rolled thinly, many like naan are fried but much thicker. All it had to say was “roll them out thinly”. And they needed more time. These are amateur, home bakers. Not all of them even make bread regularly and this has often been the case on the show.
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u/Y_ddraig_gwyn 1h ago
you see this logic when writing exam questions: unless serving a minimum competence or safety role, any question that everyone gets right or everyone gets wrong is revised or removed as it doesn’t tell you anything. This is what happened here: 100% failure reflects on the technical, not on the bakers.
Looking at the ingredients and video online it can be done, but even theses are ambiguous: ‘slice’ the grapes does not mean ‘halve‘, but you have to watch like a hawk to tell, even though it makes a huge difference.
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u/Reasonable_Speed7471 4h ago
The timing was completely unrealistic. The actual recipe from PH's book is double the time. There was no way the bakers could do this challenge. I just saw a video of a professional baker trying to do it and they needed 30minutes longer.
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u/DoctorSpacecase 1h ago edited 1h ago
Exactly.
Everyone is shouting about this bake and how the bakers are not talented. BUT... Aaron (previous bakeoff winner) realized this is a recipe from Paul's baking book, and guess what? It's not nearly as flat in the photos in the book as it was shown on the show, and it and actually looks a bit like what the bakers made. On top of it - the recipe IN PAUL's OWN BOOK calls for 2 HOURS OF PREP and an hour of proving. Shocker, all of the bakers on this episode had underproved bread.
So which is it, Paul? It's easily under an hour as you told Nigella, or it's 2 hours, as your book says? They set them up for failure, and for drama on the show. And unfortunately the modern bakeoff audience is piling on to say the bakers are shitty. Not fair! When everyone gets it wrong, it's a judges problem... especially when Paul's own bake does not look like what they asked for.
I'm honestly pissed for the bakers, with everyone on reddit and Instagram calling them untalented.
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u/IceDragonPlay 2h ago edited 1h ago
I have been making breads at home for many years and would have missed the timing on this recipe. I also would have interpreted it as a Naan bread that was a little fluffy. With the time allowed I would have ended up with raw bread too, and not realized it until I was frying them.
I also got accused of making excuses for bad bakers when I said that on a different discussion. I make bread a couple times a week and assessed it for working in my kitchen. Straight from go it would take my oven 15 minutes to preheat for roasting the grapes.
IF I had time to fully read the recipe I might have sussed that it was not reasonable to make in an hour and made it differently than written. But that takes non-pressured thought time to decide a different approach could be taken. In a one hour challenge I am not sure that would happen.
it is clear for the entire episode that they are not routinely making bread as home bakers, but this was a poorly selected challenge
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u/Reasonable_Speed7471 2h ago
I'm curious why only I need a spoiler tag and not the OP and every other person commenting about the episode?
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u/tardisthecat 5h ago
Please add a spoiler tag. This episode hasn’t aired in the US yet.
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u/wheelsofstars 4h ago
Why would you click into a thread about a technical you haven't seen expecting not to be spoiled?
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u/NothingMan1975 2h ago
Perhaps they are considering other folks who haven't been spoiled already and want to help them avoid that.
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u/tardisthecat 3h ago
The title pretty clearly gives the plot away. And if that wasn’t enough, the preview text was right there.
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u/wheelsofstars 1h ago
I didn't know the spoiler tag hid the title as well, I apologise for my rudeness.
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u/Angelou898 40m ago
I’m still not over the notion of baking with fucking GRAPES. There’s a reason no one ever does that
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u/Dismal_Letter_3191 32m ago
Were the examples filled or were the grapes and cheese just incorporated into the dough? It seemed like Paul's example just had bit of cheese and grapes folded into the dough.
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u/jprocter15 8h ago
The fact that all of them had halved grapes instead of smaller pieces that could more easily be worked into it makes me wonder if the instructions were poorly done this time. Flat breads aren't difficult, and when everyone messes it up that badly, it shows something definitely went wrong somewhere not just on their end
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u/Ocelotstar 6h ago
It’s a recipe from Paul’s own recipe book. It requires 2 hours prep and 5-6mins cooking per flatbread. Yeah, the production team have a lot to answer for.
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u/Valuable_Teacher_578 6h ago
I thought they had changed the technicals so they showed them an example of the finished product this, but they didn’t do that for the flatbreads where they did for the cake the other week.
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u/axw3555 6h ago
They don’t do it the same way every time anymore. They vary it.
And honestly, if you need a reference pic for flatbreads, I’m not sure that “country’s best home bakers” is the right description.
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u/Valuable_Teacher_578 6h ago
Also some would argue that Naan bread, pita bread, and focaccia are all classed as flatbreads but are usually much thicker than other flatbreads like a tortilla or chapatti
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u/Valuable_Teacher_578 6h ago
I could understand if one or two misinterpreted, but the fact that they all got it wrong shows that the task given was not clear enough. They all used small frying pans, none of them were making large ones. It’s almost malicious intent that the task setters want the bakers to fail by being purposefully ambiguous.
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u/Ceezeecz 6h ago
I think the fact that they all made very similar bread means none of them knew what to do and they all copied each other. If one of them had actually made a flatbread maybe that person could have been copied and they’d have done better overall. They really didn’t have a clue of what flatbread meant. That’s on them, not the technical.
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u/BrilliantSpray9447 4h ago
Okay, an hour was maybe a bit short. But how none of them realised that frying a flatbread meant that the dough had to be thin is beyond me.
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u/Responsible-Oil-9452 4h ago
Timing wasn't unrealistic at all, because they'd have been fully cooked in the time they had cooked their flatbreads, had they been much thinner
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u/wintershark_ 3h ago
It’s crazy because if you get selected as a contestant you know there’s going to be a Bread Week. You know many of the other weeks are going to involve some kind of bread making. You know Paul holds bread up to be the highest form of baking. You know the judges can and will overlook a myriad of kitchen ineptitudes if you bake them a good loaf of bread.
Why were so many of them like, “well I’m a little nervous because I’ve never actually baked bread before…”
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u/sampletrouts 8h ago
You can't fault the bakers, when they all did poorly. It's very easy to say that the bakers all messed up, when we the audience are given the information by Paul that the trick of the recipe is to make a version of flat bread that is very thin and spread out. It feels like a 'gotcha' moment, that has nothing to do with checking how good the bakers are.
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u/AgentMarkSnow 4h ago
This makes me question the whole lot of contestants. They aren’t qualified. The flatbread challenge isn’t any more difficult than other bread week challenges.
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u/DoctorSpacecase 1h ago
I posted in another comments, but this recipe is in Paul's book. It calls for an hour of proving and two hours of prep, including an hour of proving. So they asked them to prepare this flatbread in less than 50% of the time it takes via Paul's own recipe. Aaron called them out on social media about this too.
Baker problem? No. The assignment was wrong from the get-go and Nigella was right to say the time was too short. Stop saying the bakers are shitty! The producers and Paul did this to amp up the drama.
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u/jafarthecat 4h ago
It makes me wonder what the recruiting process is like. I know if I was going to be on a show like this I would at least practice things I thought would be on the show. I certainly wouldn't go on a show where I knew they had a bread week and declare that I'd never baked bread.
Are they only notified that they'll be on the shows the day before?
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u/One-Permission1917 3h ago
If I was serious about even auditioning for the show I would be preparing way in advance for it all - bread especially! Knowing how tough Paul is to please with bread I would be practicing like mad.
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u/gold1mpala 1h ago
If some couldn’t do it then it’s a talent issue, if no one can do it it’s a briefing problem. Either the time or the details.
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u/CharacterWest4661 7h ago
Ignoring that grapes don't work on flatbread and have to be covered by cheese and honey...
If you look at Paul's recipes for these, they take far far far longer than the alloted time.
Thats your sister. Not a skill issue on this one.
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u/Party_Advantage_3733 4h ago
This is the 1st time I honestly believe I could have won the technical. The people who should be embarrassed are (most of) the bakers. Flatbreads are incredibly easy to make, called FLATbread and an hour was twice as much time as you actually need to make them.
The grapes presented something of a challenge but I'm surprised no-one thought to just mush them a bit, it's hardly rocket science (barely even food tech).
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u/Icy-Lawfulness-4111 9h ago
I feel like the grapes were the issue and threw everyone.
Due to the size of the grapes they were making the flatbreads thicker to accommodate them. I'm sure I heard one of the guys saying he didn't want them poking out.
I think something like a Peshwari naan might have been better as the filling is coconut and sultanas which can be flattened much easier.
It seemed a lot of them panicked on how to make them thin AND get the filling in. That's why we had a few flat ones with no filling (or it scattered on top) and most that were massively think and trying to contain the filling.