The Great British Baking Show (2010–…): Season 5, Episode 8 - Advanced Dough - full transcript
It's the quarter-finals of the competition and only five bakers remain. Mary and Paul up the ante to see which bakers will rise to the challenge. The competitors must make enriched sweet fruit loaves for their Signature, followed by a Technical challenge that stretches them to the limit. Finally, the bakers must make 36 showstopping doughnuts, demonstrating skills and ideas that take baking to a new level.
Welcome back to the tent.
We are at the quarterfinal stage of Bake Off and with only five
bakers left standing, who are Mary and Paul going to pick off next?
They're like the velociraptors of the baking world.
THEY SCREECH LIKE VELOCIRAPTORS
BOTH: Welcome to the Great British Bake Off.
Last time, the bakers strove for perfect pastry.
Come on, pasties!
Richard excelled at eclairs...
- Great pastry.
- Thank you.
..winning Star Baker for the third time. Others didn't fare so well.
- This is awful.
- Ow!
- Looks a little bit messy.
- Yeah.
And Kate became the seventh baker to leave the tent.
Now the five remaining bakers must impress Paul
with fruity signatures...
He just does that to scare me.
..achieve the perfect coiled loaf in a tortuous technical...
It's a funny-looking thing.
'..and conjure up 36 mouth-watering doughnuts.'
Curtain ring.
SHE LAUGHS
Who has the skill to stay the course?
I think you've cracked it.
And whose baking will fail to make the grade?
- LIVERPUDLIAN ACCENT:
- "All right, it was overworked."
That's the Paul we know.
It's hard, isn't it? Because we've had bread week
and this is an entirely different ball game.
This is like bread week but better.
It's like that was bread GCSEs, this is bread A-level.
- It's like a PhD in bread.
- Nobel Prize-winning.
So what do we call it?
BOTH: It's advanced dough week.
The eclairs have just haunted me.
I just keep thinking back to how awful they were.
I'm hoping that this week will be a lot more planned.
Having won Star Baker
and then have a nightmare week
has almost become a bit of an MO for me.
Hopefully that won't happen this week,
but, yeah, I'm keeping an eye out for it.
It's important you go in and execute
everything to perfection, I think,
otherwise you're on your bike.
Morning, bakers.
For your Signature Challenge, Paul
and Mary would very much like you to make a sweet fruit loaf, please.
This should be made from enriched dough which, as we know,
is a dough that has won the butter lottery.
And it can be any filling or any flavour that you like.
The key thing about your sweet loaves, though, bakers, is this.
It's got to be freeform.
We don't want to see any baking in tins.
You've got two and a half hours for your Signature Challenge.
BOTH: Get set. Bake!
Enriched dough benefits from a slow prove
so the challenge for our bakers is to devise a fruit loaf
they can successfully make in the time allowed.
Paul's enriched dough takes three and a half hours,
whereas we've only got two and a half, so it's quite difficult
to get a good prove and a good bake in that kind of time.
Enriched dough is a particularly difficult thing to master.
The butter, eggs and sugar and milk, if you use it,
sit on the yeast and just retard it.
Doesn't kill it.
It just slows it up, making it a little bit more difficult to
make that perfect loaf.
When it's an enriched dough, it does take that much longer to prove
and it's no good being under-proved
and hope it will be rescued in the oven - it won't.
You've got to get your dough working quickly,
so I'm using everything warm, and it's warm in the tent,
which is good.
My bake takes longer to bake because I bake it on low heat for longer.
It's timing is the biggest problem.
- Morning.
- Luis, what kind of sweet loaf have you chosen?
I'm making what I've called a Black Forest Cherry Tree.
- I'm using the bath bun principle...
- Really?
..of lots of little buns which
will prove to give you the top of the tree.
Luis' tear-and-share cherry tree has a cinnamon-flavoured trunk
and the buns which make the branches are packed with morello cherries
and dark chocolate chips.
What's this?
That is some cherry brandy that I've brought.
Every part of the tear-and-share tree
has a sugar cube in the middle, and the brandy,
I just soak the sugar cube - it's a good carrier for liquid without wetting the dough.
I'm making a Spiced Plum Iced Bread Swirl.
It's kind of a malty, cinnamon-y dough with some little prune
pieces running through it, and then I'm making a spiced plum jam.
Martha's jam will be the filling for her fruit loaf,
which she's decorating with a plum-flavoured icing
and flaked almonds.
I've got some like cassis in the jam that my Auntie has made and lots
of star anise and cloves in there as well - it's almost a bit Chinese-y.
Think Christmas crossed Chinese New Year, in a bread.
It's quite a sloppy dough, enriched dough, but after I've proved it
and kneaded it with a bit of flour afterwards, it should come good.
With their dough in the proving drawer slowly doubling in size,
the bakers now start preparing the fruit they're using
to fill and decorate their loaves.
I've no idea how you get a green cherry.
I need to look that up at some point.
- Hello, Chetna.
- Hello.
Right, what are you doing at the moment?
I'm preparing the filling.
I've taken inspiration from a Croatian bread which is
called "potizza". Somewhere it's called "poatizza".
Different names.
Is it a pizza?
No, "potizza".
Chetna's take on the Eastern European bread, povitica,
will be shaped using
eight rolls of dough, filled with a rich paste of walnuts,
cocoa and finely chopped dates.
Do you slice it or do you pull it?
When you slice it, it looks really pretty inside.
Like snooker balls in a triangle.
Yes, yes.
I'm making...I'm actually calling it Lincolnshire plum braid.
There is a Lincolnshire plum bread, but it's just a play on words.
Rather than just standard mixed fruit, I'm using apricot,
strawberries, putting some marzipan in there, bit of Marsala wine.
Should be quite good. Should be very good.
As well as dried fruit, Nancy's
using cinnamon, nutmeg and orange and lemon zest
to favour her plaited loaf.
Morning!
DEVICE BLEEPS
- Is that your dough, Nancy?
- That's my dough.
And I'm going to finish the first prove in the microwave.
Have you tried this before?
Yes, I've practised it.
The big worry today is you're going to say this bread is under-proved.
- It's a dangerous thing to do.
- It is.
I think Paul's learnt something today.
- You never use a microwave, do you?
- No, I never use a microwave.
No, I never do but needs must.
You've thought this one out, it's going to work.
SHE LAUGHS
I thought that was the Marsala.
It's oil!
While the others rely on their proving drawers,
Nancy's trying to bypass the hour-and-a-half proving time her dough needs.
- You microwaving it?
- Yeah.
- I've never seen that.
He said it's a dangerous thing to do.
- HE LAUGHS
- Did he? Not for our Nance.
Not for me.
She's using the microwave to inject that little bit of heat in there.
There is an issue with that because it destroys the protein structure because you're forcing
heat and it tends to break down so it can destabilise the dough.
Bloody hell, Nancy!
LAUGHTER
So I've cut down my rising time by a good half.
What stage are you up to?
I'm just arranging all of my fruit to spread out.
What I'll be doing is making essentially a Chelsea bun,
I'm making a Swedish tea ring.
So I'll be rolling out a Chelsea bun rectangle here, sprinkling it
with all of my various ingredients, but instead of cutting it
I'm going to roll it up and form it into a ring and slash the outside.
Richard's fruit Swedish tea ring
will be filled with a mixture of dried fruits and pecan nuts,
glazed with apricot jam
and topped with lemon water icing.
So you're going to bring your dough out and pop it into all that flour?
Do you not think that's a little bit excessive?
My dough looking a little bit wet so
- I'm going to suck a little bit of wet out of it.
- Where's your dough now?
- It is quite...
- Oh, my God.
- It's got plenty of fun to be had.
It's risen quite high as well.
The carbon-dioxide...you can see the balloon on the top. Good luck, mate.
Thank you.
I always worry when Paul comes along and asks me
a pointed question about my dough and then saunters off. I think
I've let it over-prove to start with, so I've had to work it in
and let it relax a little bit, but I think I've got enough time.
Yeah, I've got enough time.
HE LAUGHS
The bakers' challenge now is to create a freeform loaf
which will hold its shape
and contain its filling without the aid of a tin.
Are you advanced dough rolling?
Yes, I am.
So what are you doing?
I'm doing eight mini rolls. I'm just going to...
Even off the ends a bit?
- No, no, no. That's the beauty of it.
- Is it?
- I like it.
There's an uneven nature do you think Paul will like it?
Well, I don't know but it is my bread.
When I've done it at home, it's looked fairly
attractive in a spirally shape.
When you have jam on toast,
because there's jam already in there,
it's like toast with the jam already inside.
I've just noticed I've not put my fruit in. That would help.
Yeah. A sweet fruit loaf.
Yeah, without the fruit.
Dip your cherries in the dough and off we go.
I'm adding chocolate now. Which I did also.
I'm really glad I came along.
If I hadn't, it would have literally been plain bed roll week.
And also each bun has a sugar cube in the middle which is
soaked in cherry brandy.
So you just get a slight hit of sweetness in the centre.
There's a polio vaccination going on in the middle of it?
- Yeah, it's like that.
- I'm intrigued now.
All right, I'll let you branch out and I'll see you later.
Cool, thank you.
Microwave for five minutes on 10% power.
OK, amazing, I'm coming with you.
How do you feel, my love?
Bit scared, quite a bit scared
because this could be my death knell.
- It's done.
- OK, right.
It's twice the size.
Should be all right. It's been all right, I've tried it.
- Good luck.
- I hope so.
Definitely a bit of silence in the tent today.
I think this task is really difficult for the time
we've been given, so I think everyone's
a little bit apprehensive about that.
With a baking time of nearly an hour,
Chetna's loaf is first in the oven.
OK, guys, see you in 50 minutes.
See you on the other side.
It's enormous. Certainly bigger than one I've done before.
It goes in there for about 25 minutes.
Bakers, you've got half an hour left on this, stop loafing around,
half an hour left.
The pressure is definitely on now because everyone is so good
and it only takes one bad bake or one mistake to make you go home.
Don't know why I'm keeping an eye on it,
there's nothing I can do now. Once it's in, it's in.
But, yeah, it's looking OK at the moment.
Enriched dough is really hard as it always looks like it's cooked.
So that looks like it's done
but I'm not convinced that it will be in the middle.
Is it going to cook in the middle at that size?
I think that's done.
Five minutes, bakers, five minutes.
I'm going to leave it for another maybe two, three minutes.
It sounds pretty hollow and it's got a good colour on the bottom.
- Nancy...
- Family loaf.
Gosh! It's the size of a Labrador.
He just does that to scare me. Brush that bit that
he touched with a bit more apricot.
SHE LAUGHS
It's looking a little bit wrinkly on the outside,
I hope that's not it all collapsing back in.
Too late now, innit?
Bakers, you've got one minute left, one minute left for your bread.
Concentration here.
Oh, yeah, I'm really happy with that.
- One, two, three.
- Thank you.
Right, the challenge is over! Step away from your bakes.
It looks most tempting, I like the shiny finish.
I think if I peer round the side,
- there's a little bit of jam coming out.
- There's a little leak.
I think the colour looks very attractive,
it's got a nice, rich colour to it.
Well, you can tell it's an enriched dough
the way it's springing back as we cut through it.
You have the nice swirls of the jam coming through.
You've got some rawness here.
Part of it is down to the fact it's still warm but you see how
light it is there and how fluffy, and then there it goes quite dense.
OK.
- It's a very nice flavour.
- Thanks.
But I would have liked to have some pieces of plum in it.
- OK.
- I think it could have done with a slower bake
- but I do like the flavour.
- Thank you.
I like the look of it, but I think...
It's very new, I've not seen anything like this before.
It is unusual. What are we expecting to see when we cut into this?
When you cut inside I'm hoping that you can see distinctive swirls.
Oh!
The weight of the top ones has rather squashed the ones
underneath, but there's plenty of filling in there.
I think you've got a little bit too much cinnamon.
I tried with slightly less and it wouldn't come through
and obviously I didn't want to...
- Ooh, it's coming through.
- Oh, was it? OK.
But it is baked and it looks good.
I am quite happy with the cinnamon,
- because, between you and me, I'm not that fond of dates.
- OK.
- Very good idea. Well done.
- Thank you.
Well, it does look very spectacular.
I think it's a nice idea, it's very attractive.
The crumb looks really nice, it's quite an open structure.
Tear off a bun, Mary.
That's what I was hoping you'd say.
I do like the flavour. The sugar, I'm not sure about.
Quirky, which I appreciate, but I don't think it needs it.
I'm certainly not arguing with the sugar in the middle,
I like a bit of originality.
I think it goes well, I've got quite a sweet tooth.
It's a beautiful bake, lovely texture,
I'll have another mouthful, please.
Thank you very much.
- What you have is something that's under-proved.
- Really?
Or the proteins have indeed been damaged.
- And then it rips and falls apart.
- Heck. Right.
It's got a good structure. I think it's slightly under-done.
It's not awful, is it? It's not awful!
- I haven't said anything yet!
- No!
- No, no, no.
I think what it is, because it's so dense...
If you'd made it longer and thinner...
Yeah. I'd just use less stuff.
I think it tastes absolutely scrumptious.
You've got all these flavours going through. I like it.
With a microwave, just using 500 grams of flour, you could feed an entire village.
- Absolutely.
- It's like magic!
It was a very, very wet dough.
- It was.
- That's why it's sitting flat.
How long was it in the oven for?
22.
Yeah, you nailed that one.
- Absolutely beautiful.
- Well done.
The structure's very good,
got a nice blend of flavours in there as well.
I think from that soft dough, you've managed to do extremely well to get
the bake that you've got and a great flavour coming through. Well done.
Thank you.
They all taste good, they look great, everyone's on it!
We're a good bunch now!
I thought that went brilliantly!
I was worried about the look of it but they both liked the look of it!
Phew!
Well, I'm feeling positive at the moment,
but if you have a bad Technical, you're straight back down again,
It's like a roller coaster here.
Back in the tent,
the bakers are preparing for their advanced dough technical challenge.
Bakers, good afternoon, welcome to your technical challenge.
Give me happy faces, bakers! There we go.
Now, Paul, you are the self-confessed King of Bread.
Would you mind leaving with Mary?
Otherwise you're going to put them off their stride.
- Is that all right? Tatty-byes. Good.
- They've gone.
What Paul and Mary would very much like you to make today
is something called a povitica...
Ooh, you little teaser.
Chetna's heard of it because she managed to make
a variant of one this morning by pure, pure chance.
But no longer Croatian-INSPIRED, we want the real thing.
- Now, it's an Eastern European cross between a bread and a pastry.
- Is it?
It's basically got hidden swirls within it. If you want to know what
it looks like, just remember a couple of hours ago and remember Chetna's.
Now, you've got two and a half hours in which to bake this.
Very, very good luck to you all.
On your marks.
- Get set.
- Baaake!
Oh, my God...this is...
I can't believe that they knew
I made that in the morning and nobody let it slip out.
I'm really excited!
Chetna's on it for this one, that was a stroke of luck from her point.
I might just watch over her and learn by watching.
It's not called copying, it's learning by watching.
I didn't even know what it was.
The only saving grace is Chetna's this morning,
so I've got a rough idea.
From the sounds of things, it's baked in a loaf tin.
It probably looks quite similar to a normal loaf of bread,
but I think, when you cut into it,
it will have all the spirals like Chetna's did this morning.
Gosh, that's a loaf and a half.
This is a povitica.
What makes it tricky, all that is one roll of dough that's been
rolled out so thin, filled with cocoa butter,
sugar and then walnuts, rolled up and then basically they've
got to lasso it around the tin to produce that shape.
And you can see those beautiful swirls on the inside.
Quite a long bake, actually -
an hour in the oven - but you need that to dry it all out.
Having all those walnuts and chocolate, it is very, very moist.
I wonder how the bakers will get on with it.
I'll tell you one thing for sure, Chetna's got a bit of a lift up.
It simply says, "Make the dough and prove."
But this is the quarterfinal technical,
it's hardly going to give you a walk-through, is it?
I used 300 grams in the morning and we're using 300 grams right now,
and we had two and a half hours in the morning,
we've got two and a half hours right now,
so I know how long to prove and things but this is one big roll.
I've never rolled a pastry so big.
You look mesmerised, Martha.
I'm just staring at my dough. I think that's there.
Now, when Chetna was making hers before,
could you have a good old gander?
I didn't pay enough attention, I'm annoyed,
- I should have watched really hard!
- Martha!
The biggest decision the bakers now face
is how to divide their time between proving and baking.
I'm going to give it an initial 30 minutes and see how it goes.
Realistically, it needs an hour's proving, but I tell you what,
if it's not rising I'll be down to that microwave.
It says, "Blitz the walnuts, vanilla seeds, sugar
"and cocoa powder together," so I'm just working my way through that.
For me, you wouldn't want to blitz it too much
because it could go a bit too mushy.
And I think you'd want some bite in this, so I don't know,
blitz it but don't over-blitz it.
HE LAUGHS
It looks very similar to what Chetna made this morning,
so I think that's probably right.
It's doubled in size, so that's all I wanted.
I don't want to over-prove it.
It's supposed to double in size.
I would have given it longer
but there's a lot of work to do with it, I think.
I know how it's supposed to look, so how long it should be,
so I've measured it out.
It says, "Stretch out dough to a large rectangle,
"as large as you can." I think that's where the clue is.
It probably needs to be the length of this cloth.
I'm going to go as big as I can.
I often put clingfilm down on the surfaces at home
because either I'm too lazy
to clean up all the flour from the kneading
or it's clean already, and my parents...
I just do it so I don't get quite so much mess everywhere.
I think that's probably as big as I dare go without ripping it.
The bakers' next challenge is to find the best way to evenly cover
their paper-thin dough with walnut filling.
The recipe says, "Spread the filling evenly over the dough."
It's as thick as toffee and the dough is so, so delicate.
I'm trying to spread it but it's not spreading
because of the butter on the dough which he asked us to put on it.
This is really odd.
Seriously.
Is it happening to everybody?
He'll go absolutely crazy if there's blobs of filling
when he cuts into it.
The microwave is the only way forward.
That's better.
I think the only way I can get this on there without destroying
the pastry is out of an icing bag.
Nancy seems to have hit on a fairly good idea
so it would be daft to not copy.
Try a piece of cling-film and then roll over the top of it.
You do know, by the way, that behind you is Richard
and everything you do, he looks at you, he's your wingman.
Yeah.
What I thought I'd do,
using more cling-film, is spread it out into a rectangle a similar size.
I must say, I'm actually really happy
with how the clingfilm did that stuff.
Everybody's really struggling to get it out on their thing, and I was,
"This is really smooth. This looks really cool!"
OK, guys, you've got one hour on your Eastern European bakes.
I hope your Croatian loaves don't split.
While the others are still shaping their loaves,
Chetna knows from experience
how important it is to leave enough time for baking.
The cooking time is so long I've got very little time to prove it,
so I am going to whack it in the proving drawer.
(This looks amazing!)
I've left the nuts quite chunky,
I don't know if that's a good thing...
- We love chunky nuts here.
- Do you?
You know we love chunky nuts on Bake Off.
HE LAUGHS
That is one hell of a snake.
The clingfilm's good now which means I don't have to touch the dough,
as it's so thin, I wouldn't want to break it.
You've done all this before.
That is a mucky end I've made of that.
- No, I have as well.
- What's to be done with that?
We'll sort that out.
Now I've seen you do it, I'm going to tell Richard,
cos it's much easier than him just watching, is that all right?
Then he can get on.
So what's she done, then?
Right, let me tell you what Nancy's done.
She's... She's sort of, yeah, she's chopped the ends.
You don't need to, you've done a nice job with yours.
I'm loving this.
- It's basically like a filled pop sock, isn't it, essentially?
- Exactly. Do you want to swap ends?
Come on, then. It's like a sort of pastry do-si-do.
- I like this.
- We're getting good length, aren't we?
How much length do you want?! The same as Nancy's.
It needs to wrap around, doesn't it?
Stop looking over!
You're terrible. Did you used to do this in your exams?
- Of course I did.
- His will be better than mine at the end of it.
Listen, it's not a competition. Hang on...
It should kind of lay in there.
This looks a bit unappetising.
It looks a bit like a Wurst, doesn't it?
What do we think? What do we think?
Proving bag.
So how long's that going to prove for?
As long as I dare, I think, is the key.
Whack it in.
With the rest of the bakers only just putting their loaves in
for a second prove,
Chetna's putting hers in the oven
after only ten minutes' rise.
Now, where is your dough? Where is it?
- Oh, it's baking.
- It's already...?
- Yes, because the key to this bake
is slow and long bake on low temperature.
You're the only person who knows that, that's the thing.
Because people haven't finished their second prove yet.
Baking is more important than the second prove.
It's a funny-looking thing.
I'll prove it for as long as I can
and then when I lose my nerve, I'll stick it in the oven.
- It might have to be thinner and longer.
- Can you do that at this stage?
- I could have a go.
Chetna's had loads of little whirls in it,
and if I do it like that, it will only have three.
Is it possible to make it much longer?
Can't really go much thinner than that, I don't think.
But that's a lot longer than it was.
There we go, we've got four, we're going to get five.
Yeah, we're going to get five, mate, that's it.
Back in the old cleaner's bag, and then how long to prove?
I think I've got about 40 minutes to go,
so I'm going to go about ten,
which isn't very many, but I haven't got much time left.
See, there's the mystery. "One egg white, beaten." It's not in there.
"Egg white, beaten." I used to put that in my hair in the '80s...
HE LAUGHS
..to give it proper rigidity,
that's all I know about egg white. "Meringue!"
- There's no meringue.
- There's no meringue, is there?
- She knows.
- Does she?
- She does.
- Yeah, she does.
"A beaten egg white and 100 grams of icing sugar and water."
So I thought, "We need a royal icing, then.
I'm not sure why on earth you'd need royal icing on something like this.
Because royal icing...
Hmm.
I think the egg white is just to brush on it for a glaze.
It's going in now.
I don't think this will take that long, to be honest.
SPEAKS CROATIAN
Which is "30 minutes" in Croatian.
In you go, Mr Loaf.
I'm not going to make royal icing now
because I don't see why royal icing should go on something like this.
I might open the oven and quickly egg wash my bread thing.
Bread cake? Cake bread.
Whatever it is, it's going to get some egg on it anyway.
So that's baking on high heat for 15 minutes
and then reduce the oven temperature so just keep an eye on it, I think.
Now I'm happy because it's got just the perfect brown
I'm looking for, so I don't want to ruin that.
- You all right?
- No, it's raw inside.
No? They've all got a similar amount of worry.
Have you just stabbed it with your stabber?
Yeah, I thought 30 minutes would be long enough, though.
- There's a lot of wet in there, I suppose.
- Yeah, there is.
It's collapsed a bit. It's a funny-looking thing, I don't know.
Presumably the wow is when you cut into it,
because there's not a lot of wow going on at the moment.
In the sense that I've absolutely no idea what it's meant to look like, I'm over the moon with it.
It's perfect, best one I've ever done.
That is a good colour, I'm pleased with that.
I'm going to get mine out.
I'm very happy with that.
It's looking all right, it's not looking amazing
but it's not looking awful.
OK, bakers, just two minutes left to lovingly
hand-fan your advanced Eastern European breads.
Two minutes.
Quarterfinalist bakers, the piping must stop.
Bring your bakes up,
pop them behind the photo of yourself on the gingham altar.
Now, what have we got here?
They look OK.
When we look at this one, the rise is a bit stunted, it's quite
heavy and it shouldn't be that heavy but it's really down to the middle.
Bated breath...
The filling has gone around some of it but it's a bit in blobs,
it should be evenly spread amongst the whole lot.
And also, it's quite doughy as well.
It hasn't been in the oven quite long enough.
The walnuts in there have got a nice crunch.
There's often a tendency to chop them too finely and it's a powder,
but you've got a lovely bit of texture from the walnuts there.
Let's move on to number two. Which is very interesting.
Royal icing on the top, no glaze on top of the loaf.
Massively under-proved, raw inside.
That is going to have a few issues.
You can tell as you cut through that's royal icing,
because it's all breaking up.
It hasn't proved up enough, the layers, there's thick and thin.
Irregular with the filling as well.
But ultimately, what you have is raw dough
because it simply wasn't in the oven long enough.
I wouldn't advise you eat it, either. Let's move onto the next one.
This looks better, the colour on it I quite like, let's have a look.
It's very warm.
(It's baked.)
And it looks...it looks pretty good, yeah.
The flavour here is good and the texture's good.
The paste itself is fairly equal, the colour's good,
the size is about right.
That's not bad at all, not bad at all.
Moving on.
- Good bake.
- Doesn't necessarily mean it's a good bake inside, though.
There you go, raw.
When you say it is totally raw, it is absolutely raw.
Now, that's to do with the baking,
it simply wasn't in there long enough.
You need to bake this for an hour,
anything less than that is going to be tricky.
So I wouldn't eat that, Mary, if I were you.
Now, moving onto the last one, the colour looks OK,
the icing is lovely.
I like the strength of the icing. Bit lop-sided...
It's drunk.
HE LAUGHS
This bit here in the middle is just raw.
And it's not very evenly mixed, is it?
We've got rather a big piece of dough there.
That's what's caused the problem with the bake.
Because it's sporadic and you had lumps of dough
and lumps of the paste, it was going to be a problem.
So, overall, we've had problems with the baking, getting them done in the time.
It comes down to understanding how you bake in an hour.
Not a stunning result for most of the bakers,
but who fared worst?
So in fifth place is this one.
Whose is this one? Well done, Martha, you couldn't even eat it.
- How long did you bake it for?
- 25 minutes.
And in fourth place, who is this one?
- Very nice icing...
- Thank you.
- ..but a bit raw inside.
Third is this one, and actually we could eat a little
- bit of this here, your paste is just all over the place.
- Yeah.
Royal icing, what were you thinking?
I know.
And in second place, who is that?
It was the baking on that.
Too high a temperature, not in there long enough.
And in first place is this one.
Almost like she'd done it before(!)
Weird that, isn't it? Weird!
It came down to the bake, how long did you leave it in for?
50 minutes.
Yeah, that's better, you were slightly...
Only another ten minutes, it would have dried it out beautifully.
- Well done, Chetna.
- Thank you.
Bakers, well done, the day is over.
Go rest up and we'll see you tomorrow.
And by the way, Chetna, tomorrow's bake isn't that, just in case
you're thinking you're going to get three in a row, not going to happen.
This is the first time I've come first on a technical,
but to be honest, if I had come anywhere
other than first, it would have been embarrassing.
I was convinced I was last.
And I'd decided that when Paul said, "And in fifth place..."
and it was me, I wasn't going to put my hand up.
SHE LAUGHS
You've got to be quite determined
if you come last in the Technical to turn it back around.
I've really got to produce something really good tomorrow or it's going to be goodbye to me.
So it's fair to say, Paul, that yesterday's bakes gave you a chance
to use your digit of doom. There was a lot of raw dough being prodded.
Well, I think there's one person
that's really sort of let herself down. That was Martha.
On her Signature Challenge, the bread was underdone,
on the technical, that was raw.
When you looked at Nancy, for instance,
who I would say is in trouble...
She had a tricky day yesterday, didn't she?
She did, she came third in the Technical,
and actually her massive plait was under-proved.
Nancy has to move herself up a bit, doesn't she, to be totally safe?
But I think Martha will have to do brilliantly today.
So she's got a lot of pressure on her young shoulders today.
Unfortunately, yes.
Good morning, bakers.
Now, for this, your special Showstopper day,
Mary and Paul would like you to create doughnuts.
We'd like you to make two different types of doughnuts, 18 of each.
That's 36 doughnuts each. That's 180 doughnuts in this room.
You've got four hours to do this bake. On your marks...
- Get set.
- Baaaake.
Yesterday was probably one of my worst days,
so this has got to be pretty good for me to stay.
Every Showstopper is pressure
because you think you've got ages but you haven't.
I've probably made in excess of 30,000, maybe 40,000 doughnuts in my time.
I know what a good doughnut should look like and taste like.
I'm looking for ambition
and I really can't wait to see what the bakers come up with.
- Morning.
- Morning, Luis.
Luis, tell us about your two kinds of doughnuts.
OK, I am making cocktail doughnuts,
so they are inspired with cocktail flavours.
And you've won. Thank you very much.
I'm making...
The first one is a mudslide and then the next one I'm making is
a ring doughnut which is a raspberry mojito.
Luis' mudslide doughnuts
have a creamy Irish liqueur centre, while his mojito doughnuts
will be filled with raspberry and mint jam.
If I'm right, that's the zest of seven limes in there.
That is quite a lot.
You remember a mojito, Mary, they have a hell of a kick.
It seems a lot but you need a lot in there to get the flavour coming through.
It's quite a big mix of dough so I can cut out 18 doughnuts.
In doughnut dough, what I really want is for it to be springy
and not too wet, so the doughnuts don't collapse after they'd proved.
It's an orange-flavoured doughnut dough
so I've put orange zests in there and some orange extract as well.
I've learnt if you say something's in something you've got to be able to taste it.
Good morning, Chetna. So, doughnuts, what have you decided to make?
I'm doing South African-inspired doughnuts which are called
koeksisters, I believe.
They are very spiced dough.
And then some potato goes in, and then you make braids out of it.
My other ones are round doughnuts which I'm going to fill
in with dark chocolate mousse.
Chetna's round doughnuts will be decorated
with white and dark chocolate, and for extra spice,
her South African braided doughnuts
will be dipped into a ginger and cinnamon syrup.
I've never had one of these before.
Great, he doesn't know how these are supposed to taste. Amazing!
You and I don't know how it's supposed to taste,
I've never had one. This weekend was all about doing something different.
I'm making a lemon and poppy-seed glazed ring doughnut
and a chocolate and passion fruit layered doughnut.
It's a bit of a hybrid between, like, a croissant and a doughnut.
Martha's ring doughnuts will be decorated with a lemon icing,
and she's making a passion fruit curd to fill her round doughnuts,
which should separate into distinctive layers when baked.
What are you up to?
I'm just laminating the dough for one of my doughnuts.
So you're doing a laminated fried doughnut?
It's basically quite light because you've got the different layers.
- Like the side of a vol-au-vent you want, but doughy?
- Yeah.
Martha's laminated dough
is put to prove in the fridge to avoid melting the butter,
while the others are using proving drawers.
It is the quarterfinals. I think you have to show you're a bit
interesting, that you can make exciting bakes that are a bit new.
Because if you just do a jam doughnut,
it doesn't really show a whole lot of inventiveness.
One of my doughnuts has jam in and I think you should have
jam in a doughnut, but that's just me.
Hello, Richard, what are you doing?
I'm doing fair-inspired doughnuts today.
I'm doing toffee apples with a kind of an apple innard.
My second one will be a heart-shaped punched-out doughnut
with a rhubarb jam inside it and custard on top.
Does it stay a heart shape in the deep fat?
It stays in the fat, it's lovely, my wife loves them.
Richard's doughnut hearts
will be topped with a swirl of cream and custard
and his apple doughnuts will be liberally coated
with cinnamon sugar and salted caramel.
And I see you are displaying them in a doughnut box.
They're orange boxes from the market but I thought I'd jazz them up and paint them.
When we were asked to do 36 doughnuts, I thought,
"That just makes me think of a family gathering."
I thought, "I'll do some adult ones with a limoncello cream,
"and some kiddie's ones, chocolate and orange, with faces decorated on."
Nancy's limoncello doughnuts will be topped with flaked almonds
and her children's doughnuts
will be coated in milk chocolate and decorated with royal icing.
What kind of faces are you going to pipe?
I thought about grey, spiky hair
- and piercing blue eyes...
- Right.
- And then a sort of a smile.
- A smile?
- Is that like a male judge?
Sort of a male judge.
Like a fictional male judge because the real male judge...
- Doesn't smile.
- ..never smiles.
- They're getting at you.
It really proved, a good start.
I'm just knocking it back a bit to get rid of the extra air.
And then I'm going to roll it out, cut out my first doughnuts.
I love this dough, it's so much fun to work with because it's so stretchy.
I'm now rolling my dough out to make my first set of doughnuts,
these will be the heart-shaped ones.
Now, Luis, am I right in thinking there's going to be a doughnut in each glass?
There is going to be a doughnut in each glass.
That is marvellous! You're going for the pizzazz on this, aren't you?
Well, it said, "Think about how you're going to present your doughnuts,"
so I certainly did!
THEY LAUGH
What's this?
- It's a cupcake corer.
- Why would you want to core a cupcake?
- So you can put filling in the middle of it.
- I knew that.
It's called a key, this bit where you fold them all in on themselves
and then you have to...
That sort of twists in on itself and raises upwards to form a ball.
Took me ages to learn to do it.
How many doughnuts have come through your house this week, do you reckon?
- Hundreds of doughnuts have come through our house.
- Seriously?
- A lot of them have gone to work.
- Builders love a doughnut.
We love a doughnut, they're for builders.
It looks like he's making darts, are you making darts?
I'm taking out the judges today.
I'd love to step on the oche with those.
This is rhubarb and ginger for my rhubarb portion of the doughnuts.
Oh, no, those are huge! Oh, no. these are way over-proved.
I'm really kicking myself for that.
Oh, no!
These are absolutely awful.
Very, very delicate...
They take about a minute-and-a-half on each side, and they have to
come out golden brown with a nice white ring round
the middle, which I think it's kind of almost got.
Not used to deep fat fryers at all. This is the method to fry.
I've not known anything else.
It's just flat, at home they were about that high.
It's just a little pancake, which is so sad,
cos I know these taste really nice at home.
He's not going to like them. Bit hard?
Curtain ring.
SHE LAUGHS
I'll whack a few more.
I'd distribute it in four points
so it should get a good amount in each doughnut.
10ml in each one, I think.
I'm just kind of roughly seeing how much is going in,
so, you know, kind of by eye.
I've got numbers on the side of my syringe,
so I'm putting 25ml of apple in each one.
That's all the apple ones done.
Now I'm going to do the rhubarb ones.
Marth, talk to me, how's it going?
Rubbish.
Marth, don't say that word.
I've just over-proved them.
The more curds you put in there, you can sort of puff them out a bit.
- What are you going to fill these with?
- I was going to fill them with Bailey's.
So you'd have a little drink and then you'd have the doughnut.
Yeah. What do you reckon?
God, I need to decide.
The judges don't really like gimmicks, but you know what,
Mary will probably hate it but I'm going for it.
I don't want it to run down the sides, I want a clean line on it.
The best temperature to work with is about 40 degrees.
If it's going onto something cold, it shouldn't run down.
Yes, that's brilliant! What do you think of the bake, Paul?
- LIVERPUDLIAN ACCENT:
- "Totally nailed it, you absolutely nailed it.
"Come on, let me shake your hand."
What? Paul, what's happened to you? You're really happy.
"All right, it was overworked." Now that's the Paul we know.
OK, doughnutters, five minutes remaining!
Oh, dear, they're different sizes and they're a bit flat.
It's over! Step away, please, step away from your bakes, time's up.
The caramel glaze, which I was looking forward to,
seems to have gone in the tray.
I ran out of time, I didn't put them on racks,
I put them straight in the tray!
Let's start with rhubarb and custard.
It's got a nice fry on it, the colour looks good
and it feels actually quite light.
I was concerned whether the hearts would keep their shape
and they've kept them beautifully.
That's cracking that, yeah.
The blend of the cream,
you've got the little bit of zing coming from the rhubarb as well.
Yeah, that's a nice doughnut, that.
Thank you.
Let's try a caramel. Nice colour on the doughnut.
Not too dark. It's quite even on both sides as well.
Oh, I like that a lot.
As a package, it's a very professional doughnut actually.
- I think you've cracked it.
- I'll take that, I'm going to pocket that.
I think it looks fun for the children.
I think it's a great display. Let's start with one of the adult ones.
The irregular differences in colour is a little bit of a worry.
We're going to have lemon cream in the middle. Limoncello.
It does actually feel quite dry inside
- and I think you could have done with frying it slightly less.
- Yeah.
The limoncello cream is absolutely lovely.
You can get away with the slight dryness
because of the moisture of the cream.
Now, the children's one.
It's got a nice colour there.
There are some dark ones up there as well.
- Did you find you were getting irregular in colour?
- They all look all right to me.
- Would you say if they didn't?
- Of course(!)
The chocolate's been put on extremely well.
But I have a strong suspicion they're slightly overdone.
They're slightly overdone.
You are good at your flavours, I just think you let
- it down with the proving and the frying on this one.
- Yeah.
The layered ones,
I don't think they've done the rise that you wanted to.
I over-proved them massively.
Let's start with the poppy seed one.
Very light, I love the way you've got the icing on that, by the way.
It's over-proved.
As soon as you open it up, you see those massive air holes.
- Just the right amount of poppy seed...
- Thank you.
..but not quite right.
Let's have a look at the laminated one.
Chocolate's staying in one place which is good...ish.
SHE LAUGHS
- A very light colour.
- OK.
- I like the passion fruit filling.
- Thank you.
What you're got overall are two great-tasting doughnuts,
- but the textures and the look are all wrong.
- Yeah.
They're very, very fatty.
I think if you add more body to it then you would have more
dough with the syrup on top rather than soaked all the way through.
But I think the flavours are lovely.
Nice bit of chocolate work on the top.
Got a nice band running through the middle.
- It's more of a ganache than a mousse.
- OK.
- It's quite thick.
The actual doughnut itself is beautifully light, well-flavoured.
It's a pity that the mousse isn't more mousse-like.
You've given us a great display.
The raspberry ones, I can see you've injected them
on all four corners. The glaze is coating them nicely.
They are a little bit uneven.
These, pretty difficult to see sitting in here.
The proof will be in the eating.
- Let's try this guy here.
- OK.
Lovely shape for a ring doughnut, nice icing across the top as well.
I can taste the mint with the raspberry, which I like.
- I'm going to have a quick look at another one.
- OK.
- Yeah, I think they're all right, actually.
- OK!
I was worried they were over-proved, but you've got a nice
- consistency in there, the flavours are beautiful.
- Thank you.
I just think you've overdone a couple of them on the turns.
- Right.
- Cocktail, madam?
Ho-ho-ho!
Happy days, eh?
- Here we go.
- I mean, why are we bothering with the doughnuts?
SHE LAUGHS
Wow, they're full.
You've made the dough quite soggy
because of the amount of filling in there.
You haven't really got a doughnut, what you've got there is
a coffee bomb with alcohol in it.
But this one I love.
Well, I must say, I think this one's absolutely delicious.
Of course you do. Mary! Have another one, Mary.
There you go, love.
- Cheers!
- Good health!
Thank you very much, Luis.
Thank you.
So whose doughnuts, Paul, made you happy?
Well, one of the things which I really like...
Ooh, and that's a calendar right there.
You've only got about 130 more to go.
Richard's doughnut, the rhubarb and custard was fantastic,
and also his apple one as well.
The fresh apple inside the doughnut was delicious.
And, Mary, whose doughnuts made you happy?
I think she's sitting in front of the one that made her happy.
Well, you might as well say that.
Luis, I thought he really was pretty original.
Do you think we could be looking at a male Star Baker then this week?
I think we might.
Nancy... Her marvellous tree, did that put her out of danger?
I thought it went very well for her.
It was quite sensible to even start with having a children's one
and an adult one.
The issue I had was the dough itself.
They were taken under-proved, all the fat was slightly too hot
because they were so irregular on colours.
Martha's been in trouble all weekend long.
Did this bake do anything to help her out?
Martha's doughnuts tasted OK, especially the poppy and lemon.
But there were issues with the dough.
Do you have any idea who you think should leave this weekend?
I definitely have somebody.
- MEL: Paul?
- Yeah, I do have somebody.
It's whether, after one of Luis' doughnuts,
- we can remember the name of that person.
- Oh, gosh.
Bakers, what a weekend it's been.
Thank you for providing us with some superlative dough.
I've got the joyful job this time,
and it's a bit of a Bake Off first, I think,
because this person who we're going to award Star Baker to this week,
it's not the first time this person's received it,
nor the second, nor the third,
but the fourth time. Keep the badge on, Richard.
- You're Star Baker, Richard. Well done!
- Crikey!
As you know, we alternate good news and bad news,
so whilst Richard, we're sharing your delight,
it's really hard, cos I have to send somebody home today
and so, with huge sadness, the person leaving us today is...
..Martha.
You are 17 and you are so brilliant
and you are going to rule the world, my darling.
Let some old women hug you.
- Come on. You rock.
- Thank you.
I've loved every minute, I've loved all the people,
I've made inedible things and delicious things.
I've come last and I've come first, I feel like I've done pretty
much everything I came here to do and I'm so happy about that.
- Well done, Martha.
- Thank you.
- You're going to do really well.
It was so sad saying goodbye to Martha.
Aged 17, she's achieved so much.
I think her name will crop up again.
Well done!
I've already got a burst eardrum from last week!
That'll be four, racked 'em up.
Yeah, that feels pretty good, pretty surprising.
Richard winning Star Baker four times has probably got all
the others really worried.
They're probably thinking, "He's done it now,
"he's the judges' favourite."
We have no favourites
and any one of those four people in that tent could win Bake Off.
'Next time, the bakers battle it out...'
What are you making?
'..in a countdown to the final.'
- Number four.
- Three.
- I've already lost count of layers.
PHONE BEEPS
That is bone-dry.
This is all about top-notch patisserie.
My hands are shaking.
I've seen pastry chefs crumble at making these things, let alone
the bakers in the tent.
SHE SIGHS
I think I've messed up here.
We are at the quarterfinal stage of Bake Off and with only five
bakers left standing, who are Mary and Paul going to pick off next?
They're like the velociraptors of the baking world.
THEY SCREECH LIKE VELOCIRAPTORS
BOTH: Welcome to the Great British Bake Off.
Last time, the bakers strove for perfect pastry.
Come on, pasties!
Richard excelled at eclairs...
- Great pastry.
- Thank you.
..winning Star Baker for the third time. Others didn't fare so well.
- This is awful.
- Ow!
- Looks a little bit messy.
- Yeah.
And Kate became the seventh baker to leave the tent.
Now the five remaining bakers must impress Paul
with fruity signatures...
He just does that to scare me.
..achieve the perfect coiled loaf in a tortuous technical...
It's a funny-looking thing.
'..and conjure up 36 mouth-watering doughnuts.'
Curtain ring.
SHE LAUGHS
Who has the skill to stay the course?
I think you've cracked it.
And whose baking will fail to make the grade?
- LIVERPUDLIAN ACCENT:
- "All right, it was overworked."
That's the Paul we know.
It's hard, isn't it? Because we've had bread week
and this is an entirely different ball game.
This is like bread week but better.
It's like that was bread GCSEs, this is bread A-level.
- It's like a PhD in bread.
- Nobel Prize-winning.
So what do we call it?
BOTH: It's advanced dough week.
The eclairs have just haunted me.
I just keep thinking back to how awful they were.
I'm hoping that this week will be a lot more planned.
Having won Star Baker
and then have a nightmare week
has almost become a bit of an MO for me.
Hopefully that won't happen this week,
but, yeah, I'm keeping an eye out for it.
It's important you go in and execute
everything to perfection, I think,
otherwise you're on your bike.
Morning, bakers.
For your Signature Challenge, Paul
and Mary would very much like you to make a sweet fruit loaf, please.
This should be made from enriched dough which, as we know,
is a dough that has won the butter lottery.
And it can be any filling or any flavour that you like.
The key thing about your sweet loaves, though, bakers, is this.
It's got to be freeform.
We don't want to see any baking in tins.
You've got two and a half hours for your Signature Challenge.
BOTH: Get set. Bake!
Enriched dough benefits from a slow prove
so the challenge for our bakers is to devise a fruit loaf
they can successfully make in the time allowed.
Paul's enriched dough takes three and a half hours,
whereas we've only got two and a half, so it's quite difficult
to get a good prove and a good bake in that kind of time.
Enriched dough is a particularly difficult thing to master.
The butter, eggs and sugar and milk, if you use it,
sit on the yeast and just retard it.
Doesn't kill it.
It just slows it up, making it a little bit more difficult to
make that perfect loaf.
When it's an enriched dough, it does take that much longer to prove
and it's no good being under-proved
and hope it will be rescued in the oven - it won't.
You've got to get your dough working quickly,
so I'm using everything warm, and it's warm in the tent,
which is good.
My bake takes longer to bake because I bake it on low heat for longer.
It's timing is the biggest problem.
- Morning.
- Luis, what kind of sweet loaf have you chosen?
I'm making what I've called a Black Forest Cherry Tree.
- I'm using the bath bun principle...
- Really?
..of lots of little buns which
will prove to give you the top of the tree.
Luis' tear-and-share cherry tree has a cinnamon-flavoured trunk
and the buns which make the branches are packed with morello cherries
and dark chocolate chips.
What's this?
That is some cherry brandy that I've brought.
Every part of the tear-and-share tree
has a sugar cube in the middle, and the brandy,
I just soak the sugar cube - it's a good carrier for liquid without wetting the dough.
I'm making a Spiced Plum Iced Bread Swirl.
It's kind of a malty, cinnamon-y dough with some little prune
pieces running through it, and then I'm making a spiced plum jam.
Martha's jam will be the filling for her fruit loaf,
which she's decorating with a plum-flavoured icing
and flaked almonds.
I've got some like cassis in the jam that my Auntie has made and lots
of star anise and cloves in there as well - it's almost a bit Chinese-y.
Think Christmas crossed Chinese New Year, in a bread.
It's quite a sloppy dough, enriched dough, but after I've proved it
and kneaded it with a bit of flour afterwards, it should come good.
With their dough in the proving drawer slowly doubling in size,
the bakers now start preparing the fruit they're using
to fill and decorate their loaves.
I've no idea how you get a green cherry.
I need to look that up at some point.
- Hello, Chetna.
- Hello.
Right, what are you doing at the moment?
I'm preparing the filling.
I've taken inspiration from a Croatian bread which is
called "potizza". Somewhere it's called "poatizza".
Different names.
Is it a pizza?
No, "potizza".
Chetna's take on the Eastern European bread, povitica,
will be shaped using
eight rolls of dough, filled with a rich paste of walnuts,
cocoa and finely chopped dates.
Do you slice it or do you pull it?
When you slice it, it looks really pretty inside.
Like snooker balls in a triangle.
Yes, yes.
I'm making...I'm actually calling it Lincolnshire plum braid.
There is a Lincolnshire plum bread, but it's just a play on words.
Rather than just standard mixed fruit, I'm using apricot,
strawberries, putting some marzipan in there, bit of Marsala wine.
Should be quite good. Should be very good.
As well as dried fruit, Nancy's
using cinnamon, nutmeg and orange and lemon zest
to favour her plaited loaf.
Morning!
DEVICE BLEEPS
- Is that your dough, Nancy?
- That's my dough.
And I'm going to finish the first prove in the microwave.
Have you tried this before?
Yes, I've practised it.
The big worry today is you're going to say this bread is under-proved.
- It's a dangerous thing to do.
- It is.
I think Paul's learnt something today.
- You never use a microwave, do you?
- No, I never use a microwave.
No, I never do but needs must.
You've thought this one out, it's going to work.
SHE LAUGHS
I thought that was the Marsala.
It's oil!
While the others rely on their proving drawers,
Nancy's trying to bypass the hour-and-a-half proving time her dough needs.
- You microwaving it?
- Yeah.
- I've never seen that.
He said it's a dangerous thing to do.
- HE LAUGHS
- Did he? Not for our Nance.
Not for me.
She's using the microwave to inject that little bit of heat in there.
There is an issue with that because it destroys the protein structure because you're forcing
heat and it tends to break down so it can destabilise the dough.
Bloody hell, Nancy!
LAUGHTER
So I've cut down my rising time by a good half.
What stage are you up to?
I'm just arranging all of my fruit to spread out.
What I'll be doing is making essentially a Chelsea bun,
I'm making a Swedish tea ring.
So I'll be rolling out a Chelsea bun rectangle here, sprinkling it
with all of my various ingredients, but instead of cutting it
I'm going to roll it up and form it into a ring and slash the outside.
Richard's fruit Swedish tea ring
will be filled with a mixture of dried fruits and pecan nuts,
glazed with apricot jam
and topped with lemon water icing.
So you're going to bring your dough out and pop it into all that flour?
Do you not think that's a little bit excessive?
My dough looking a little bit wet so
- I'm going to suck a little bit of wet out of it.
- Where's your dough now?
- It is quite...
- Oh, my God.
- It's got plenty of fun to be had.
It's risen quite high as well.
The carbon-dioxide...you can see the balloon on the top. Good luck, mate.
Thank you.
I always worry when Paul comes along and asks me
a pointed question about my dough and then saunters off. I think
I've let it over-prove to start with, so I've had to work it in
and let it relax a little bit, but I think I've got enough time.
Yeah, I've got enough time.
HE LAUGHS
The bakers' challenge now is to create a freeform loaf
which will hold its shape
and contain its filling without the aid of a tin.
Are you advanced dough rolling?
Yes, I am.
So what are you doing?
I'm doing eight mini rolls. I'm just going to...
Even off the ends a bit?
- No, no, no. That's the beauty of it.
- Is it?
- I like it.
There's an uneven nature do you think Paul will like it?
Well, I don't know but it is my bread.
When I've done it at home, it's looked fairly
attractive in a spirally shape.
When you have jam on toast,
because there's jam already in there,
it's like toast with the jam already inside.
I've just noticed I've not put my fruit in. That would help.
Yeah. A sweet fruit loaf.
Yeah, without the fruit.
Dip your cherries in the dough and off we go.
I'm adding chocolate now. Which I did also.
I'm really glad I came along.
If I hadn't, it would have literally been plain bed roll week.
And also each bun has a sugar cube in the middle which is
soaked in cherry brandy.
So you just get a slight hit of sweetness in the centre.
There's a polio vaccination going on in the middle of it?
- Yeah, it's like that.
- I'm intrigued now.
All right, I'll let you branch out and I'll see you later.
Cool, thank you.
Microwave for five minutes on 10% power.
OK, amazing, I'm coming with you.
How do you feel, my love?
Bit scared, quite a bit scared
because this could be my death knell.
- It's done.
- OK, right.
It's twice the size.
Should be all right. It's been all right, I've tried it.
- Good luck.
- I hope so.
Definitely a bit of silence in the tent today.
I think this task is really difficult for the time
we've been given, so I think everyone's
a little bit apprehensive about that.
With a baking time of nearly an hour,
Chetna's loaf is first in the oven.
OK, guys, see you in 50 minutes.
See you on the other side.
It's enormous. Certainly bigger than one I've done before.
It goes in there for about 25 minutes.
Bakers, you've got half an hour left on this, stop loafing around,
half an hour left.
The pressure is definitely on now because everyone is so good
and it only takes one bad bake or one mistake to make you go home.
Don't know why I'm keeping an eye on it,
there's nothing I can do now. Once it's in, it's in.
But, yeah, it's looking OK at the moment.
Enriched dough is really hard as it always looks like it's cooked.
So that looks like it's done
but I'm not convinced that it will be in the middle.
Is it going to cook in the middle at that size?
I think that's done.
Five minutes, bakers, five minutes.
I'm going to leave it for another maybe two, three minutes.
It sounds pretty hollow and it's got a good colour on the bottom.
- Nancy...
- Family loaf.
Gosh! It's the size of a Labrador.
He just does that to scare me. Brush that bit that
he touched with a bit more apricot.
SHE LAUGHS
It's looking a little bit wrinkly on the outside,
I hope that's not it all collapsing back in.
Too late now, innit?
Bakers, you've got one minute left, one minute left for your bread.
Concentration here.
Oh, yeah, I'm really happy with that.
- One, two, three.
- Thank you.
Right, the challenge is over! Step away from your bakes.
It looks most tempting, I like the shiny finish.
I think if I peer round the side,
- there's a little bit of jam coming out.
- There's a little leak.
I think the colour looks very attractive,
it's got a nice, rich colour to it.
Well, you can tell it's an enriched dough
the way it's springing back as we cut through it.
You have the nice swirls of the jam coming through.
You've got some rawness here.
Part of it is down to the fact it's still warm but you see how
light it is there and how fluffy, and then there it goes quite dense.
OK.
- It's a very nice flavour.
- Thanks.
But I would have liked to have some pieces of plum in it.
- OK.
- I think it could have done with a slower bake
- but I do like the flavour.
- Thank you.
I like the look of it, but I think...
It's very new, I've not seen anything like this before.
It is unusual. What are we expecting to see when we cut into this?
When you cut inside I'm hoping that you can see distinctive swirls.
Oh!
The weight of the top ones has rather squashed the ones
underneath, but there's plenty of filling in there.
I think you've got a little bit too much cinnamon.
I tried with slightly less and it wouldn't come through
and obviously I didn't want to...
- Ooh, it's coming through.
- Oh, was it? OK.
But it is baked and it looks good.
I am quite happy with the cinnamon,
- because, between you and me, I'm not that fond of dates.
- OK.
- Very good idea. Well done.
- Thank you.
Well, it does look very spectacular.
I think it's a nice idea, it's very attractive.
The crumb looks really nice, it's quite an open structure.
Tear off a bun, Mary.
That's what I was hoping you'd say.
I do like the flavour. The sugar, I'm not sure about.
Quirky, which I appreciate, but I don't think it needs it.
I'm certainly not arguing with the sugar in the middle,
I like a bit of originality.
I think it goes well, I've got quite a sweet tooth.
It's a beautiful bake, lovely texture,
I'll have another mouthful, please.
Thank you very much.
- What you have is something that's under-proved.
- Really?
Or the proteins have indeed been damaged.
- And then it rips and falls apart.
- Heck. Right.
It's got a good structure. I think it's slightly under-done.
It's not awful, is it? It's not awful!
- I haven't said anything yet!
- No!
- No, no, no.
I think what it is, because it's so dense...
If you'd made it longer and thinner...
Yeah. I'd just use less stuff.
I think it tastes absolutely scrumptious.
You've got all these flavours going through. I like it.
With a microwave, just using 500 grams of flour, you could feed an entire village.
- Absolutely.
- It's like magic!
It was a very, very wet dough.
- It was.
- That's why it's sitting flat.
How long was it in the oven for?
22.
Yeah, you nailed that one.
- Absolutely beautiful.
- Well done.
The structure's very good,
got a nice blend of flavours in there as well.
I think from that soft dough, you've managed to do extremely well to get
the bake that you've got and a great flavour coming through. Well done.
Thank you.
They all taste good, they look great, everyone's on it!
We're a good bunch now!
I thought that went brilliantly!
I was worried about the look of it but they both liked the look of it!
Phew!
Well, I'm feeling positive at the moment,
but if you have a bad Technical, you're straight back down again,
It's like a roller coaster here.
Back in the tent,
the bakers are preparing for their advanced dough technical challenge.
Bakers, good afternoon, welcome to your technical challenge.
Give me happy faces, bakers! There we go.
Now, Paul, you are the self-confessed King of Bread.
Would you mind leaving with Mary?
Otherwise you're going to put them off their stride.
- Is that all right? Tatty-byes. Good.
- They've gone.
What Paul and Mary would very much like you to make today
is something called a povitica...
Ooh, you little teaser.
Chetna's heard of it because she managed to make
a variant of one this morning by pure, pure chance.
But no longer Croatian-INSPIRED, we want the real thing.
- Now, it's an Eastern European cross between a bread and a pastry.
- Is it?
It's basically got hidden swirls within it. If you want to know what
it looks like, just remember a couple of hours ago and remember Chetna's.
Now, you've got two and a half hours in which to bake this.
Very, very good luck to you all.
On your marks.
- Get set.
- Baaake!
Oh, my God...this is...
I can't believe that they knew
I made that in the morning and nobody let it slip out.
I'm really excited!
Chetna's on it for this one, that was a stroke of luck from her point.
I might just watch over her and learn by watching.
It's not called copying, it's learning by watching.
I didn't even know what it was.
The only saving grace is Chetna's this morning,
so I've got a rough idea.
From the sounds of things, it's baked in a loaf tin.
It probably looks quite similar to a normal loaf of bread,
but I think, when you cut into it,
it will have all the spirals like Chetna's did this morning.
Gosh, that's a loaf and a half.
This is a povitica.
What makes it tricky, all that is one roll of dough that's been
rolled out so thin, filled with cocoa butter,
sugar and then walnuts, rolled up and then basically they've
got to lasso it around the tin to produce that shape.
And you can see those beautiful swirls on the inside.
Quite a long bake, actually -
an hour in the oven - but you need that to dry it all out.
Having all those walnuts and chocolate, it is very, very moist.
I wonder how the bakers will get on with it.
I'll tell you one thing for sure, Chetna's got a bit of a lift up.
It simply says, "Make the dough and prove."
But this is the quarterfinal technical,
it's hardly going to give you a walk-through, is it?
I used 300 grams in the morning and we're using 300 grams right now,
and we had two and a half hours in the morning,
we've got two and a half hours right now,
so I know how long to prove and things but this is one big roll.
I've never rolled a pastry so big.
You look mesmerised, Martha.
I'm just staring at my dough. I think that's there.
Now, when Chetna was making hers before,
could you have a good old gander?
I didn't pay enough attention, I'm annoyed,
- I should have watched really hard!
- Martha!
The biggest decision the bakers now face
is how to divide their time between proving and baking.
I'm going to give it an initial 30 minutes and see how it goes.
Realistically, it needs an hour's proving, but I tell you what,
if it's not rising I'll be down to that microwave.
It says, "Blitz the walnuts, vanilla seeds, sugar
"and cocoa powder together," so I'm just working my way through that.
For me, you wouldn't want to blitz it too much
because it could go a bit too mushy.
And I think you'd want some bite in this, so I don't know,
blitz it but don't over-blitz it.
HE LAUGHS
It looks very similar to what Chetna made this morning,
so I think that's probably right.
It's doubled in size, so that's all I wanted.
I don't want to over-prove it.
It's supposed to double in size.
I would have given it longer
but there's a lot of work to do with it, I think.
I know how it's supposed to look, so how long it should be,
so I've measured it out.
It says, "Stretch out dough to a large rectangle,
"as large as you can." I think that's where the clue is.
It probably needs to be the length of this cloth.
I'm going to go as big as I can.
I often put clingfilm down on the surfaces at home
because either I'm too lazy
to clean up all the flour from the kneading
or it's clean already, and my parents...
I just do it so I don't get quite so much mess everywhere.
I think that's probably as big as I dare go without ripping it.
The bakers' next challenge is to find the best way to evenly cover
their paper-thin dough with walnut filling.
The recipe says, "Spread the filling evenly over the dough."
It's as thick as toffee and the dough is so, so delicate.
I'm trying to spread it but it's not spreading
because of the butter on the dough which he asked us to put on it.
This is really odd.
Seriously.
Is it happening to everybody?
He'll go absolutely crazy if there's blobs of filling
when he cuts into it.
The microwave is the only way forward.
That's better.
I think the only way I can get this on there without destroying
the pastry is out of an icing bag.
Nancy seems to have hit on a fairly good idea
so it would be daft to not copy.
Try a piece of cling-film and then roll over the top of it.
You do know, by the way, that behind you is Richard
and everything you do, he looks at you, he's your wingman.
Yeah.
What I thought I'd do,
using more cling-film, is spread it out into a rectangle a similar size.
I must say, I'm actually really happy
with how the clingfilm did that stuff.
Everybody's really struggling to get it out on their thing, and I was,
"This is really smooth. This looks really cool!"
OK, guys, you've got one hour on your Eastern European bakes.
I hope your Croatian loaves don't split.
While the others are still shaping their loaves,
Chetna knows from experience
how important it is to leave enough time for baking.
The cooking time is so long I've got very little time to prove it,
so I am going to whack it in the proving drawer.
(This looks amazing!)
I've left the nuts quite chunky,
I don't know if that's a good thing...
- We love chunky nuts here.
- Do you?
You know we love chunky nuts on Bake Off.
HE LAUGHS
That is one hell of a snake.
The clingfilm's good now which means I don't have to touch the dough,
as it's so thin, I wouldn't want to break it.
You've done all this before.
That is a mucky end I've made of that.
- No, I have as well.
- What's to be done with that?
We'll sort that out.
Now I've seen you do it, I'm going to tell Richard,
cos it's much easier than him just watching, is that all right?
Then he can get on.
So what's she done, then?
Right, let me tell you what Nancy's done.
She's... She's sort of, yeah, she's chopped the ends.
You don't need to, you've done a nice job with yours.
I'm loving this.
- It's basically like a filled pop sock, isn't it, essentially?
- Exactly. Do you want to swap ends?
Come on, then. It's like a sort of pastry do-si-do.
- I like this.
- We're getting good length, aren't we?
How much length do you want?! The same as Nancy's.
It needs to wrap around, doesn't it?
Stop looking over!
You're terrible. Did you used to do this in your exams?
- Of course I did.
- His will be better than mine at the end of it.
Listen, it's not a competition. Hang on...
It should kind of lay in there.
This looks a bit unappetising.
It looks a bit like a Wurst, doesn't it?
What do we think? What do we think?
Proving bag.
So how long's that going to prove for?
As long as I dare, I think, is the key.
Whack it in.
With the rest of the bakers only just putting their loaves in
for a second prove,
Chetna's putting hers in the oven
after only ten minutes' rise.
Now, where is your dough? Where is it?
- Oh, it's baking.
- It's already...?
- Yes, because the key to this bake
is slow and long bake on low temperature.
You're the only person who knows that, that's the thing.
Because people haven't finished their second prove yet.
Baking is more important than the second prove.
It's a funny-looking thing.
I'll prove it for as long as I can
and then when I lose my nerve, I'll stick it in the oven.
- It might have to be thinner and longer.
- Can you do that at this stage?
- I could have a go.
Chetna's had loads of little whirls in it,
and if I do it like that, it will only have three.
Is it possible to make it much longer?
Can't really go much thinner than that, I don't think.
But that's a lot longer than it was.
There we go, we've got four, we're going to get five.
Yeah, we're going to get five, mate, that's it.
Back in the old cleaner's bag, and then how long to prove?
I think I've got about 40 minutes to go,
so I'm going to go about ten,
which isn't very many, but I haven't got much time left.
See, there's the mystery. "One egg white, beaten." It's not in there.
"Egg white, beaten." I used to put that in my hair in the '80s...
HE LAUGHS
..to give it proper rigidity,
that's all I know about egg white. "Meringue!"
- There's no meringue.
- There's no meringue, is there?
- She knows.
- Does she?
- She does.
- Yeah, she does.
"A beaten egg white and 100 grams of icing sugar and water."
So I thought, "We need a royal icing, then.
I'm not sure why on earth you'd need royal icing on something like this.
Because royal icing...
Hmm.
I think the egg white is just to brush on it for a glaze.
It's going in now.
I don't think this will take that long, to be honest.
SPEAKS CROATIAN
Which is "30 minutes" in Croatian.
In you go, Mr Loaf.
I'm not going to make royal icing now
because I don't see why royal icing should go on something like this.
I might open the oven and quickly egg wash my bread thing.
Bread cake? Cake bread.
Whatever it is, it's going to get some egg on it anyway.
So that's baking on high heat for 15 minutes
and then reduce the oven temperature so just keep an eye on it, I think.
Now I'm happy because it's got just the perfect brown
I'm looking for, so I don't want to ruin that.
- You all right?
- No, it's raw inside.
No? They've all got a similar amount of worry.
Have you just stabbed it with your stabber?
Yeah, I thought 30 minutes would be long enough, though.
- There's a lot of wet in there, I suppose.
- Yeah, there is.
It's collapsed a bit. It's a funny-looking thing, I don't know.
Presumably the wow is when you cut into it,
because there's not a lot of wow going on at the moment.
In the sense that I've absolutely no idea what it's meant to look like, I'm over the moon with it.
It's perfect, best one I've ever done.
That is a good colour, I'm pleased with that.
I'm going to get mine out.
I'm very happy with that.
It's looking all right, it's not looking amazing
but it's not looking awful.
OK, bakers, just two minutes left to lovingly
hand-fan your advanced Eastern European breads.
Two minutes.
Quarterfinalist bakers, the piping must stop.
Bring your bakes up,
pop them behind the photo of yourself on the gingham altar.
Now, what have we got here?
They look OK.
When we look at this one, the rise is a bit stunted, it's quite
heavy and it shouldn't be that heavy but it's really down to the middle.
Bated breath...
The filling has gone around some of it but it's a bit in blobs,
it should be evenly spread amongst the whole lot.
And also, it's quite doughy as well.
It hasn't been in the oven quite long enough.
The walnuts in there have got a nice crunch.
There's often a tendency to chop them too finely and it's a powder,
but you've got a lovely bit of texture from the walnuts there.
Let's move on to number two. Which is very interesting.
Royal icing on the top, no glaze on top of the loaf.
Massively under-proved, raw inside.
That is going to have a few issues.
You can tell as you cut through that's royal icing,
because it's all breaking up.
It hasn't proved up enough, the layers, there's thick and thin.
Irregular with the filling as well.
But ultimately, what you have is raw dough
because it simply wasn't in the oven long enough.
I wouldn't advise you eat it, either. Let's move onto the next one.
This looks better, the colour on it I quite like, let's have a look.
It's very warm.
(It's baked.)
And it looks...it looks pretty good, yeah.
The flavour here is good and the texture's good.
The paste itself is fairly equal, the colour's good,
the size is about right.
That's not bad at all, not bad at all.
Moving on.
- Good bake.
- Doesn't necessarily mean it's a good bake inside, though.
There you go, raw.
When you say it is totally raw, it is absolutely raw.
Now, that's to do with the baking,
it simply wasn't in there long enough.
You need to bake this for an hour,
anything less than that is going to be tricky.
So I wouldn't eat that, Mary, if I were you.
Now, moving onto the last one, the colour looks OK,
the icing is lovely.
I like the strength of the icing. Bit lop-sided...
It's drunk.
HE LAUGHS
This bit here in the middle is just raw.
And it's not very evenly mixed, is it?
We've got rather a big piece of dough there.
That's what's caused the problem with the bake.
Because it's sporadic and you had lumps of dough
and lumps of the paste, it was going to be a problem.
So, overall, we've had problems with the baking, getting them done in the time.
It comes down to understanding how you bake in an hour.
Not a stunning result for most of the bakers,
but who fared worst?
So in fifth place is this one.
Whose is this one? Well done, Martha, you couldn't even eat it.
- How long did you bake it for?
- 25 minutes.
And in fourth place, who is this one?
- Very nice icing...
- Thank you.
- ..but a bit raw inside.
Third is this one, and actually we could eat a little
- bit of this here, your paste is just all over the place.
- Yeah.
Royal icing, what were you thinking?
I know.
And in second place, who is that?
It was the baking on that.
Too high a temperature, not in there long enough.
And in first place is this one.
Almost like she'd done it before(!)
Weird that, isn't it? Weird!
It came down to the bake, how long did you leave it in for?
50 minutes.
Yeah, that's better, you were slightly...
Only another ten minutes, it would have dried it out beautifully.
- Well done, Chetna.
- Thank you.
Bakers, well done, the day is over.
Go rest up and we'll see you tomorrow.
And by the way, Chetna, tomorrow's bake isn't that, just in case
you're thinking you're going to get three in a row, not going to happen.
This is the first time I've come first on a technical,
but to be honest, if I had come anywhere
other than first, it would have been embarrassing.
I was convinced I was last.
And I'd decided that when Paul said, "And in fifth place..."
and it was me, I wasn't going to put my hand up.
SHE LAUGHS
You've got to be quite determined
if you come last in the Technical to turn it back around.
I've really got to produce something really good tomorrow or it's going to be goodbye to me.
So it's fair to say, Paul, that yesterday's bakes gave you a chance
to use your digit of doom. There was a lot of raw dough being prodded.
Well, I think there's one person
that's really sort of let herself down. That was Martha.
On her Signature Challenge, the bread was underdone,
on the technical, that was raw.
When you looked at Nancy, for instance,
who I would say is in trouble...
She had a tricky day yesterday, didn't she?
She did, she came third in the Technical,
and actually her massive plait was under-proved.
Nancy has to move herself up a bit, doesn't she, to be totally safe?
But I think Martha will have to do brilliantly today.
So she's got a lot of pressure on her young shoulders today.
Unfortunately, yes.
Good morning, bakers.
Now, for this, your special Showstopper day,
Mary and Paul would like you to create doughnuts.
We'd like you to make two different types of doughnuts, 18 of each.
That's 36 doughnuts each. That's 180 doughnuts in this room.
You've got four hours to do this bake. On your marks...
- Get set.
- Baaaake.
Yesterday was probably one of my worst days,
so this has got to be pretty good for me to stay.
Every Showstopper is pressure
because you think you've got ages but you haven't.
I've probably made in excess of 30,000, maybe 40,000 doughnuts in my time.
I know what a good doughnut should look like and taste like.
I'm looking for ambition
and I really can't wait to see what the bakers come up with.
- Morning.
- Morning, Luis.
Luis, tell us about your two kinds of doughnuts.
OK, I am making cocktail doughnuts,
so they are inspired with cocktail flavours.
And you've won. Thank you very much.
I'm making...
The first one is a mudslide and then the next one I'm making is
a ring doughnut which is a raspberry mojito.
Luis' mudslide doughnuts
have a creamy Irish liqueur centre, while his mojito doughnuts
will be filled with raspberry and mint jam.
If I'm right, that's the zest of seven limes in there.
That is quite a lot.
You remember a mojito, Mary, they have a hell of a kick.
It seems a lot but you need a lot in there to get the flavour coming through.
It's quite a big mix of dough so I can cut out 18 doughnuts.
In doughnut dough, what I really want is for it to be springy
and not too wet, so the doughnuts don't collapse after they'd proved.
It's an orange-flavoured doughnut dough
so I've put orange zests in there and some orange extract as well.
I've learnt if you say something's in something you've got to be able to taste it.
Good morning, Chetna. So, doughnuts, what have you decided to make?
I'm doing South African-inspired doughnuts which are called
koeksisters, I believe.
They are very spiced dough.
And then some potato goes in, and then you make braids out of it.
My other ones are round doughnuts which I'm going to fill
in with dark chocolate mousse.
Chetna's round doughnuts will be decorated
with white and dark chocolate, and for extra spice,
her South African braided doughnuts
will be dipped into a ginger and cinnamon syrup.
I've never had one of these before.
Great, he doesn't know how these are supposed to taste. Amazing!
You and I don't know how it's supposed to taste,
I've never had one. This weekend was all about doing something different.
I'm making a lemon and poppy-seed glazed ring doughnut
and a chocolate and passion fruit layered doughnut.
It's a bit of a hybrid between, like, a croissant and a doughnut.
Martha's ring doughnuts will be decorated with a lemon icing,
and she's making a passion fruit curd to fill her round doughnuts,
which should separate into distinctive layers when baked.
What are you up to?
I'm just laminating the dough for one of my doughnuts.
So you're doing a laminated fried doughnut?
It's basically quite light because you've got the different layers.
- Like the side of a vol-au-vent you want, but doughy?
- Yeah.
Martha's laminated dough
is put to prove in the fridge to avoid melting the butter,
while the others are using proving drawers.
It is the quarterfinals. I think you have to show you're a bit
interesting, that you can make exciting bakes that are a bit new.
Because if you just do a jam doughnut,
it doesn't really show a whole lot of inventiveness.
One of my doughnuts has jam in and I think you should have
jam in a doughnut, but that's just me.
Hello, Richard, what are you doing?
I'm doing fair-inspired doughnuts today.
I'm doing toffee apples with a kind of an apple innard.
My second one will be a heart-shaped punched-out doughnut
with a rhubarb jam inside it and custard on top.
Does it stay a heart shape in the deep fat?
It stays in the fat, it's lovely, my wife loves them.
Richard's doughnut hearts
will be topped with a swirl of cream and custard
and his apple doughnuts will be liberally coated
with cinnamon sugar and salted caramel.
And I see you are displaying them in a doughnut box.
They're orange boxes from the market but I thought I'd jazz them up and paint them.
When we were asked to do 36 doughnuts, I thought,
"That just makes me think of a family gathering."
I thought, "I'll do some adult ones with a limoncello cream,
"and some kiddie's ones, chocolate and orange, with faces decorated on."
Nancy's limoncello doughnuts will be topped with flaked almonds
and her children's doughnuts
will be coated in milk chocolate and decorated with royal icing.
What kind of faces are you going to pipe?
I thought about grey, spiky hair
- and piercing blue eyes...
- Right.
- And then a sort of a smile.
- A smile?
- Is that like a male judge?
Sort of a male judge.
Like a fictional male judge because the real male judge...
- Doesn't smile.
- ..never smiles.
- They're getting at you.
It really proved, a good start.
I'm just knocking it back a bit to get rid of the extra air.
And then I'm going to roll it out, cut out my first doughnuts.
I love this dough, it's so much fun to work with because it's so stretchy.
I'm now rolling my dough out to make my first set of doughnuts,
these will be the heart-shaped ones.
Now, Luis, am I right in thinking there's going to be a doughnut in each glass?
There is going to be a doughnut in each glass.
That is marvellous! You're going for the pizzazz on this, aren't you?
Well, it said, "Think about how you're going to present your doughnuts,"
so I certainly did!
THEY LAUGH
What's this?
- It's a cupcake corer.
- Why would you want to core a cupcake?
- So you can put filling in the middle of it.
- I knew that.
It's called a key, this bit where you fold them all in on themselves
and then you have to...
That sort of twists in on itself and raises upwards to form a ball.
Took me ages to learn to do it.
How many doughnuts have come through your house this week, do you reckon?
- Hundreds of doughnuts have come through our house.
- Seriously?
- A lot of them have gone to work.
- Builders love a doughnut.
We love a doughnut, they're for builders.
It looks like he's making darts, are you making darts?
I'm taking out the judges today.
I'd love to step on the oche with those.
This is rhubarb and ginger for my rhubarb portion of the doughnuts.
Oh, no, those are huge! Oh, no. these are way over-proved.
I'm really kicking myself for that.
Oh, no!
These are absolutely awful.
Very, very delicate...
They take about a minute-and-a-half on each side, and they have to
come out golden brown with a nice white ring round
the middle, which I think it's kind of almost got.
Not used to deep fat fryers at all. This is the method to fry.
I've not known anything else.
It's just flat, at home they were about that high.
It's just a little pancake, which is so sad,
cos I know these taste really nice at home.
He's not going to like them. Bit hard?
Curtain ring.
SHE LAUGHS
I'll whack a few more.
I'd distribute it in four points
so it should get a good amount in each doughnut.
10ml in each one, I think.
I'm just kind of roughly seeing how much is going in,
so, you know, kind of by eye.
I've got numbers on the side of my syringe,
so I'm putting 25ml of apple in each one.
That's all the apple ones done.
Now I'm going to do the rhubarb ones.
Marth, talk to me, how's it going?
Rubbish.
Marth, don't say that word.
I've just over-proved them.
The more curds you put in there, you can sort of puff them out a bit.
- What are you going to fill these with?
- I was going to fill them with Bailey's.
So you'd have a little drink and then you'd have the doughnut.
Yeah. What do you reckon?
God, I need to decide.
The judges don't really like gimmicks, but you know what,
Mary will probably hate it but I'm going for it.
I don't want it to run down the sides, I want a clean line on it.
The best temperature to work with is about 40 degrees.
If it's going onto something cold, it shouldn't run down.
Yes, that's brilliant! What do you think of the bake, Paul?
- LIVERPUDLIAN ACCENT:
- "Totally nailed it, you absolutely nailed it.
"Come on, let me shake your hand."
What? Paul, what's happened to you? You're really happy.
"All right, it was overworked." Now that's the Paul we know.
OK, doughnutters, five minutes remaining!
Oh, dear, they're different sizes and they're a bit flat.
It's over! Step away, please, step away from your bakes, time's up.
The caramel glaze, which I was looking forward to,
seems to have gone in the tray.
I ran out of time, I didn't put them on racks,
I put them straight in the tray!
Let's start with rhubarb and custard.
It's got a nice fry on it, the colour looks good
and it feels actually quite light.
I was concerned whether the hearts would keep their shape
and they've kept them beautifully.
That's cracking that, yeah.
The blend of the cream,
you've got the little bit of zing coming from the rhubarb as well.
Yeah, that's a nice doughnut, that.
Thank you.
Let's try a caramel. Nice colour on the doughnut.
Not too dark. It's quite even on both sides as well.
Oh, I like that a lot.
As a package, it's a very professional doughnut actually.
- I think you've cracked it.
- I'll take that, I'm going to pocket that.
I think it looks fun for the children.
I think it's a great display. Let's start with one of the adult ones.
The irregular differences in colour is a little bit of a worry.
We're going to have lemon cream in the middle. Limoncello.
It does actually feel quite dry inside
- and I think you could have done with frying it slightly less.
- Yeah.
The limoncello cream is absolutely lovely.
You can get away with the slight dryness
because of the moisture of the cream.
Now, the children's one.
It's got a nice colour there.
There are some dark ones up there as well.
- Did you find you were getting irregular in colour?
- They all look all right to me.
- Would you say if they didn't?
- Of course(!)
The chocolate's been put on extremely well.
But I have a strong suspicion they're slightly overdone.
They're slightly overdone.
You are good at your flavours, I just think you let
- it down with the proving and the frying on this one.
- Yeah.
The layered ones,
I don't think they've done the rise that you wanted to.
I over-proved them massively.
Let's start with the poppy seed one.
Very light, I love the way you've got the icing on that, by the way.
It's over-proved.
As soon as you open it up, you see those massive air holes.
- Just the right amount of poppy seed...
- Thank you.
..but not quite right.
Let's have a look at the laminated one.
Chocolate's staying in one place which is good...ish.
SHE LAUGHS
- A very light colour.
- OK.
- I like the passion fruit filling.
- Thank you.
What you're got overall are two great-tasting doughnuts,
- but the textures and the look are all wrong.
- Yeah.
They're very, very fatty.
I think if you add more body to it then you would have more
dough with the syrup on top rather than soaked all the way through.
But I think the flavours are lovely.
Nice bit of chocolate work on the top.
Got a nice band running through the middle.
- It's more of a ganache than a mousse.
- OK.
- It's quite thick.
The actual doughnut itself is beautifully light, well-flavoured.
It's a pity that the mousse isn't more mousse-like.
You've given us a great display.
The raspberry ones, I can see you've injected them
on all four corners. The glaze is coating them nicely.
They are a little bit uneven.
These, pretty difficult to see sitting in here.
The proof will be in the eating.
- Let's try this guy here.
- OK.
Lovely shape for a ring doughnut, nice icing across the top as well.
I can taste the mint with the raspberry, which I like.
- I'm going to have a quick look at another one.
- OK.
- Yeah, I think they're all right, actually.
- OK!
I was worried they were over-proved, but you've got a nice
- consistency in there, the flavours are beautiful.
- Thank you.
I just think you've overdone a couple of them on the turns.
- Right.
- Cocktail, madam?
Ho-ho-ho!
Happy days, eh?
- Here we go.
- I mean, why are we bothering with the doughnuts?
SHE LAUGHS
Wow, they're full.
You've made the dough quite soggy
because of the amount of filling in there.
You haven't really got a doughnut, what you've got there is
a coffee bomb with alcohol in it.
But this one I love.
Well, I must say, I think this one's absolutely delicious.
Of course you do. Mary! Have another one, Mary.
There you go, love.
- Cheers!
- Good health!
Thank you very much, Luis.
Thank you.
So whose doughnuts, Paul, made you happy?
Well, one of the things which I really like...
Ooh, and that's a calendar right there.
You've only got about 130 more to go.
Richard's doughnut, the rhubarb and custard was fantastic,
and also his apple one as well.
The fresh apple inside the doughnut was delicious.
And, Mary, whose doughnuts made you happy?
I think she's sitting in front of the one that made her happy.
Well, you might as well say that.
Luis, I thought he really was pretty original.
Do you think we could be looking at a male Star Baker then this week?
I think we might.
Nancy... Her marvellous tree, did that put her out of danger?
I thought it went very well for her.
It was quite sensible to even start with having a children's one
and an adult one.
The issue I had was the dough itself.
They were taken under-proved, all the fat was slightly too hot
because they were so irregular on colours.
Martha's been in trouble all weekend long.
Did this bake do anything to help her out?
Martha's doughnuts tasted OK, especially the poppy and lemon.
But there were issues with the dough.
Do you have any idea who you think should leave this weekend?
I definitely have somebody.
- MEL: Paul?
- Yeah, I do have somebody.
It's whether, after one of Luis' doughnuts,
- we can remember the name of that person.
- Oh, gosh.
Bakers, what a weekend it's been.
Thank you for providing us with some superlative dough.
I've got the joyful job this time,
and it's a bit of a Bake Off first, I think,
because this person who we're going to award Star Baker to this week,
it's not the first time this person's received it,
nor the second, nor the third,
but the fourth time. Keep the badge on, Richard.
- You're Star Baker, Richard. Well done!
- Crikey!
As you know, we alternate good news and bad news,
so whilst Richard, we're sharing your delight,
it's really hard, cos I have to send somebody home today
and so, with huge sadness, the person leaving us today is...
..Martha.
You are 17 and you are so brilliant
and you are going to rule the world, my darling.
Let some old women hug you.
- Come on. You rock.
- Thank you.
I've loved every minute, I've loved all the people,
I've made inedible things and delicious things.
I've come last and I've come first, I feel like I've done pretty
much everything I came here to do and I'm so happy about that.
- Well done, Martha.
- Thank you.
- You're going to do really well.
It was so sad saying goodbye to Martha.
Aged 17, she's achieved so much.
I think her name will crop up again.
Well done!
I've already got a burst eardrum from last week!
That'll be four, racked 'em up.
Yeah, that feels pretty good, pretty surprising.
Richard winning Star Baker four times has probably got all
the others really worried.
They're probably thinking, "He's done it now,
"he's the judges' favourite."
We have no favourites
and any one of those four people in that tent could win Bake Off.
'Next time, the bakers battle it out...'
What are you making?
'..in a countdown to the final.'
- Number four.
- Three.
- I've already lost count of layers.
PHONE BEEPS
That is bone-dry.
This is all about top-notch patisserie.
My hands are shaking.
I've seen pastry chefs crumble at making these things, let alone
the bakers in the tent.
SHE SIGHS
I think I've messed up here.