The Great British Baking Show (2010–…): Season 8, Episode 7 - Italian Week - full transcript
In the series' first Italian Week, the competition heats up as the bakers take on Sicilian cannoli, margherita pizza, and sfogliatelle.
It's week seven, there's only
six bakers left
and, boy, are they going to need
some skills today!
Hey, Sandi, what are you doing?
I'm making pizza.
Paul's been teaching me how to toss.
He is an expert.
Welcome to The Great British Bake Off.
Last time... I hate rushing.
It's not me... the bakers got to
grips with pastry.
Sophie came close again.
Beautifully done.
But it was Liam...
Spectacular! ..winning Star Baker
for the very first time.
I am so embarrassed.
Kate and Stacey were close to cracking.
Meh! But it was Julia who crumbled
under the pressure...
My pastry is absolutely rank.
I'm so sorry.
...becoming the sixth
baker to say farewell.
Now for the first time ever, it's
Italian week on Bake Off...
Si, buongiorno, come stai?
...with temperatures to match.
Oh, it is boiling.
The bakers take on one of Sicily's
favourite street foods...
What am I doing?
...tackle a classic that's not as
simple as they think...
Absolute disaster.
...and attempt the most complex of
Italian pastries.
Hell, is what it is.
Hell.
Are you sure this canal goes all the
way from Berkshire to Venice?
Yeah, it's one of Britain's best
kept secrets.
A bit like the fact that we're doing
the first ever Italian week on
Bake Off. I am so excited, I cannot
wait to get started.
Me too. Actually though,
I think this might take a bit longer
than I thought.
If you're a gondolier, shouldn't you
be singing to me?
Yeah, fair enough. What do you want?
Rage Against The Machine?
Kanye West? Do you know? I think
I'll walk.
I could do something smoother.
Luther Vandross? No longer
listening, start the show.
It's shaping up to be the hottest
day in the tent... ever.
It is going to be like Valley of the
Kings in that tent today.
Valley of the Cakes, I think!
If we have to do the naked Bake Off,
so be it.
I'm still here, can you believe it?
They can't get rid of me!
Hopefully they won't get rid of me
this week either.
Star Baker last week was...
Yeah, it was sick,
but literally I enjoyed it
for, like, one day.
I've got to crack on with Italian
week now.
Oh, Italian week.
It's like boot camp for bakers.
I absolutely love Italy.
Hopefully by the end of the weekend,
I still will!
Morning, bakers, or should I say,
buongiorno, bakers!
I'm so excited about Italian week,
I've designed my own Italian shirt.
Italian stallion.
Pony. More of a pony!
Right, Prue and Paul would like you
to make your version of the Sicilian
classic cannoli, so those little
fried pastry tubes.
Apparently every self-respecting
Sicilian mother, and even one or two
with no respect at all, has her own
version of this recipe.
The judges would like you to make 18
with three different flavoured
fillings. Obviously your tubes must
be identical.
Nobody wants mismatched tubes.
No, that is painful.
You've got 2.5 hours.
On your marks... Get set...
BOTH: ..infornare!
Ciao, bellissimo.
Isn't that Italian? I don't-a know!
The one thing I have learned is that
you respect Italian food
and Italians.
The Sicilian cannoli is a tube of
deep-fried pastry,
filled with a ricotta sweet mixture.
Just to make it a little harder,
we've told them they have to have
three different fillings.
The most difficult thing about
making a cannoli is getting the
shell right.
They must be beautiful golden brown
and it must have bubbles
when you're frying it. This is very
characteristic of a cannoli.
The luscious filling,
it mustn't run out.
You should be able to eat it in your
hand without a mess.
All right, it's very hot today and
we're asking the bakers to make
cannoli, but they make them in
Palermo in the middle of summer
and that can be 45 degrees.
No excuses.
So, I'm just making my
dough for my 18 cannolis.
We're going to add vinegar, quite an
unusual ingredient.
This is the science bit.
Vinegar evaporates quickly and
creates bubbles.
Getting the balance right...
160g.
...is crucial to achieving the
perfect cannoli shell.
I don't want to put too much in.
I don't want it to be a sticky mess.
Good morning, Liam. Hi, Liam.
Hello. Right, tell us all about your
cannoli.
So, my cannolis are inspired by me,
basically, how I am as a person.
I love that, it's a narcissistic
cannoli!
HE LAUGHS
My mates say I have a cheesy sort of
sense of humour.
So I'm going for a lemon cheesecake
cannoli,
and then I eat a lot of Turkish food
in my spare time, so my second one
is inspired by baklava.
As well as his lemon cheesecake flavour,
and baklava-inspired honey and nuts,
Liam's third filling
is marshmallow and chocolate.
My dad took me camping a couple of
years ago.
Camping always reminds me of
marshmallows and chocolate.
I love the idea of the flavours.
Have you been practising?
Yeah, 100%.
I don't know how many cannolis I've
been through this week, but...
You haven't been practising,
have you? I have! Why don't
you believe me?!
He's like the godfather of the
Bake Off tent!
One egg plus yolk.
For Steven, every week is Italian week.
I have family in Italy.
My grandfather was Italian,
but unfortunately,
it's not done much to help me here today
because I don't think I ever saw him
make cannoli.
Steven's adding Italian style to his
cannoli with coffee and hazelnuts,
almond praline and Italian lemon curd.
The reason I'm using Italian lemons
is not just because it's Italian
week, but they are incredible,
the flavour and the smell.
They do produce some incredible food
and that's why we love it.
Hello, Stacey. What are you doing?
What's your cannoli?
I have a jam roly cannoli.
It was jam roly-poly cannoli but I
took out the poly.
Stacey is also making cheesecake and
tiramisu fillings.
And she's adding cocoa powder
to her dough.
I decided to do a new twist.
How are you going to know when your
cannoli shells are cooked,
because they're going to be brown,
aren't they?
Yeah. I just sort of know.
I feel like I know.
But I might not, we'll see.
This is going to chill out in the
fridge.
I'm just going to start my fillings now.
The bakers are aiming for flavours
that will make their cannoli truly
eccezionale.
I'm just creaming together my
marshmallow and meringue,
and then my other batch,
walnuts and pistachios.
I'm doing Kate's happy hour,
Italian cocktail cannoli.
This is my favourite drink
of all time. Have a bit!
Kate's minibar is officially open!
Oh, it's so good!
So good! Hwah-ha!
Kate's cocktail flavours will
include limoncello,
Negroni and espresso martini.
It's not a proper night out if you
don't have at least three espresso
martinis!
What you don't want to do is put too
much alcohol in it,
it just overwhelms everything.
I had one once, an espresso martini,
and at the end of drinking it,
I gave away all my jewellery to
strangers!
A terrifying drink.
Kate's not the only baker heading
for the cocktail cabinet.
These flavours have come from
a night out.
Yan's filling one with
Amaretto-infused mint,
rose and lime.
Another with honey and Amaretto.
The third is passion fruit and
vanilla, and like Stacey,
she's also adding cocoa powder to
her dough.
Do you get the telltale bubbles on
your cannoli?
Yes, I do. But what I'm finding is,
I can't see it when it turns the
correct colour to take them out,
so I'm relying on instinct.
Now I'm just making the base for all
18 cannoli across three flavours.
The thickener, that's the most
important thing.
Hopefully my filling will be nice
and tough
and not fall out of the tube.
I'm going to add the ricotta.
It's the ricotta base one.
Ricotta is the traditional base
and most of the bakers are sticking
with this Italian favourite.
I don't want to play around with
classics, especially Sicilian,
because I imagine they'd probably
get quite cranky.
I'm doing ricotta.
I just didn't want crowds of angry
Italians saying,
"That's not traditional! What is she
doing? She's messing around."
I'd probably find a horse's head in
my bed the next day if I did that.
But one of the bakers...
We're not here to do exactly as per
the Sicilians,
we're here to sort of put our
own spin and adapt recipes.
...isn't afraid to take on
tradition.
Are you using Sicilian sheep's milk,
ricotta?
I'm not using any ricotta.
Sophie's filling one with
Amaretto and almond,
another with limoncello cream and
the third with a mix of chocolate
and hazelnuts. Where's the ricotta?
I'm using mascarpone. What?!
In a cannoli? Yes.
Why? I think the texture's a lot
nicer.
Oh, God, what? It's a cannoli!
It has ricotta in it. Does it have
to be ricotta?
Obviously an apple pie's got to have
apple in it,
you can't make it with pear.
It's highly unusual.
It's not really that weird.
It is if you're in Sicily.
How does this set then?
I am using gelatine.
Gelatine as well! Are they still
going to be recognisable cannoli?
They will definitely be cannoli.
They're a little twist.
Bakers, according to the pasta clock,
you are halfway through your challenge.
I can assure you, this guy is
usually pretty accurate.
I've got my dough.
I'm passing it through the pasta roller.
This gets rolled out quite thinly.
What's important is that it's thin
enough for it to be nice and light,
but it's thick enough to make bubbles.
It needs the bubbles.
It's a balancing act.
Do I look like I know what I'm doing?
It's just, how thin am I going to go?
I've gone for, like, a
one millimetre thickness.
Too thick and the pastry won't cook.
Too thin and the bubbles won't appear.
There's a set of rules that you have
to follow and if you don't,
then you get stung.
Right, cut it.
I'm going to roll this out.
Are you all right?
I'm just hot.
The winner of this gets to lie down
in a child's paddling pool full of
ice cold water. Everyone should lie
down in a child's paddling pool!
Ah! That's quite nice, isn't it?
Today the tent is hotter than Palermo.
And they're deep frying, poor things.
It's about to get even hotter.
Cos what you want to do in this
heat is put more clothes on.
Don't want to burn myself.
Health and safety first.
If we're splashed with hot oil, it's
going to really, really hurt.
Let's do this.
In they go.
This bit is the most important bit.
I just hope they don't separate.
Seal the edges.
If you don't seal them, it just
comes straight off the form
and just floats to the top
like a poppadom.
Great, it's poppadom week!
Why did that just ping off the mould?
I'm not impressed. Oh, God!
Some of them are just floating up.
So that is one minute 15.
That's not enough.
Ew!
I can't tell when it's done.
What I do find fascinating is,
Stacey and Yan added a little bit of
cocoa powder to the mixture.
It's quite dark.
How will she know when it's fried?
I tell when I'm deep frying
something by the colour.
Are you all right?
Oh, dear, that's not good!
And this is what it's not supposed
to look like.
It was a shame because that was a
good-looking one.
It's not the day, is it? No.
Yeah, I totally want to do this
on a really hot day.
Do you want me to somehow block the sun?
If you could, that would be great.
I'll put a call into the moon. Thank
you, my darling. See you in a bit.
They're making bubbles.
You want the bubbles on the surface
of it.
Bubbles are really important.
Some of them haven't got as many
bubbles as I'd like, so I'm going to
do those ones again.
And I really don't want to run out
of time.
Right, fillings.
Smashed up almond praline.
The chocolate espresso one is under way.
Lemon cheesecake.
Bakers, you have 15 minutes.
You see, these are better.
I've got 15 minutes.
I'm not going to have time to fill
them if I don't get on.
It's weird, it's not as thick as it
is normally.
As soon as it hits the really hot
weather here,
it's getting quite liquid already.
Oh, my God, it's all coming out the
sides.
This is a disaster!
Just a disaster.
SHE SIGHS
Stop shaking.
I think I'm one short.
I've lost a shell.
Bakers, you have just ten minutes.
Oh, under pressure, immense pressure.
Hey, Stace, I'm coming in, but only
briefly and then I'm leaving.
OK, I'm going out. I'll come in,
you go out. Sorry!
The little tube has fallen off.
What am I doing?
Oh, man!
You've got one minute, bakers.
60 seconds to make it count.
You can do it, come on.
I can't believe what I've done.
The raspberries were supposed to go
at the end of these,
but I've only gone and put them on
the other ones, haven't I?
I'm so upset.
My hands always shake when it comes
to the last couple of minutes.
Bakers, time's up.
It's too hot.
They look a mess.
The bakers' cannoli now face
the judgment of Paul and Prue.
Hi, Stacey. Hi.
Is that not meant to be like that?
No, and I'll tell you why.
What's basically happened is,
I put the raspberries on the end of
the wrong ones.
I dipped them in the wrong thing.
It's formed bubbles, it has got some
bubbles on there.
Tiramisu? Yeah.
Great flavours, tiramisu.
That cheesecake one is absolutely
beautiful.
But the pastry, it's a bit doughy.
Let's have a raspberry one.
A bit chewy. It shouldn't be chewy.
It's underdone.
The pastry dough started off brown.
It's very difficult to tell looking
at it when their deep-fried enough.
When you were holding that one,
I couldn't tell what was fingers
and what was cannoli.
I think you should rename them,
Hollywood Fingers!
Do you know what? I might do.
Little Stumps!
Great shell. Really beautiful
bubbles.
OK, let's look at this marshmallow
chocolate.
Well, OK. It's pouring out, isn't
it?
Yeah. Probably not the best choice
for a filling.
The lemony one is delicious.
Very good. What's this one again?
Pistachios, walnuts, ricotta.
You can really taste all of that,
sensational. Cheers.
Look at the bubbles on that, it's
perfect.
We have milk chocolate, honey
and almond praline.
I love the flavour. The praline in
there, particularly, is very good.
Steven, that mocha one is very
unctuous, lovely.
This is Italian lemon curd.
Very sharp.
It is sharp.
The flavour of that with the
Italian lemon is delicious.
It's so sharp. Well done.
My biggest concern is, I don't see
too many bubbles on them.
Some of them look quite flat,
without too much activation.
The pastry itself is very, very thin.
Remind us of this one.
Mint, lime and rose.
A nice bit of tartness.
The flavours in that are lovely.
Honey and amaretto.
I don't think that's mean to happen.
Bartender's always ready for you!
Your pastry is too tender.
Because I didn't squish that hard,
it just fell to pieces.
The cocoa has fooled you into
thinking it's ready. Probably could
have done with a little bit
longer. Think your shells
have let you down. Hm.
They're certainly not quite
identical, are they?
Some of them are a bit shorter,
some of them are more bubbly.
Got quite a few bubbles on some of them.
This is the Martini one, is that
right? Yeah, espresso, yeah.
Not a very alcoholic.
I'm a little disappointed, I thought
there would be more.
This one? Limoncello.
I think the alcohol is all right.
This is the negroni.
Very orangey. The ricotta in that
one, particularly, you can taste,
which is delicious. Thank you.
So, I have a lemon, lime and ginger,
an amaretto and almond,
and hazelnut and chocolate.
I've tried it with ricotta, I just
prefer them with mascarpone.
Right, it's going to be fascinating
to try it with the mascarpone.
It's going to be interesting to see
how this set in the shell itself.
This is a real test!
Mm!
It doesn't pour all down, it holds.
Yeah, very good. This not at all
sloppy.
I think you might have converted me.
Awesome, thank you.
The almond and amaretto. Mm!
That is heaven.
You've got a slight dryness coming
through in the flavouring as well.
OK.
Yeah, I think you've got three
very good cannolis there.
If cannoli on the streets of Sicily
tasted like these,
I'd be very happy. I'm not sure I'd
be welcome after my use of
mascarpone, though!
I think you should take that in when
you get your next spray tan,
for the colour!
I think you should take that one in!
HE LAUGHS
Thank you very much indeed.
Very good. Thank you.
I was a little bit concerned, but
that went a lot better than I
thought it was going to.
He was playing with his jaw
and I thought,
I know that feeling. You know when
you eat something really sharp,
it gets you right here.
You cannot afford even to mess up
a little bit here now.
Every single challenge counts.
It's very, very, very stressful.
Ciao, bakers, it's time for Italian
week's technical challenge,
set for you by the lovely Signora Prue.
Do you have any advice for the
baking bambinos?
ITALIAN TRANSLATION:
Well, I don't think that could have
been any more helpful.
Judges, I'm going to have to ask you
to leave the tent, please.
Prue, you can get on with your novel.
Paul has enroled in a mime class.
For today's technical challenge,
Prue and Paul would like you to make
an Italian classic, pizza!
We want a perfectly made margherita.
You've got an hour and a half. On
your marks... Get set...
BOTH: Infornare.
I don't actually know what pizza is.
No, I'm joking!
Basically, it's bread with a bit of
cheese on top.
What's the worst that could happen?
So, Prue, why have you chosen a
pizza margherita as the technical
challenge? Well, it's one of those
things that everyone thinks is easy,
and actually it's quite difficult
to get right.
The dough, it's got to stretch
because you want it to be really,
really thin. Have you left them with
rolling pins?
No, we took their rolling pins away.
We thought they might fling it up
and get it round.
A bit of throwing, press with the
fingers, a bit of throwing?
That's the traditional way to do it.
You've got the classic Italian flag,
the white, the red and green.
It's a sacred thing, the pizza
margherita to the Italians.
It really is important if they're
going to use basil to put it
on at the end.
It tastes better raw.
It has to be cooked until it just
begins to blacken.
Crisp dough, on the outside,
bending over in the middle.
I think they will find it tougher
than they think.
"200g of flour,
half a teaspoon of fine salt,
"2tbsp of olive oil."
"Add the yeast to the remaining
dough ingredients to make the
dough. Knead."
I'm not really sure what a pizza
dough is meant to be like.
Prue said something like...
Na-na-na, na ah, nah!
Magra is thin.
Bellissima means beautiful.
She also said croccante, at the end,
which means crispy.
HE LAUGHS
It's almost there, bouncing back.
Come on, baby.
Give it like a couple more kneads
and then be able to prove.
I don't think we need the proving
drawer in this temperature.
I'm just going to clingfilm it.
Right, prove it for an hour?
I don't know how long.
Usually you leave it until it has
doubled in size.
BEEPING
Are you playing a video game, Liam?
It just says make a tomato sauce,
which is helpful.
Chopping some garlic.
They give you no quantities
on the tomatoes, olive oil, garlic
or lemon juice.
Can I hold that for you?
You how much we love you!
I'm not sure how much garlic to do.
What do you think?
Just put the tomatoes in.
Making sure it's probably nice
and thick and rich.
Now they've got lemon juice in
there. Strange.
I'm sure you add the lemon juice at
the end.
I might do a little bit now.
A pinch of caster sugar in to
balance it out.
I'm sure I've done it wrong.
I've just chopped the end of my
finger off on the fan.
Don't worry. Oh, God, I'm going to
faint.
Do you want a glass of water? What
happened? My finger went in the fan.
Someone has badly stitched the
health and safety inspector.
It's all fine, I've had a look, it's
fine.
Have you finished massacring yourself?
Yeah. I once took a plaster off and
I actually passed out.
In terms of stories for dinner parties,
I wouldn't lead with that one.
Bakers, you are halfway through your
pizza delivery time.
What are you doing? I'm being the
leaning Tower of Pizza.
OK, I'm going now. OK.
It should be double in size for the
dough so that's perfect.
Shape and toss enough of the dough
to make a 30cm base.
There's no rolling pin.
Sneaky. Sneaky, Prue.
Of course you don't have a rolling pin.
I've never done freehand like this.
The whole point of that,
you've got equal force going around
all the entire pizza, so it brings
it all out, but it could fall on the
floor and I'd have to make it again.
Now? Not yet.
OK. It's too scary, man.
I don't know!
I might sort of flatten it out by hand.
I'm just going to stretch it like this.
I'm not going to toss it because I
can't because I've injured myself.
What about now? No, not yet.
Go on, I'll take responsibility.
Go on. Go on, go on, go on.
A bit higher. I'm not.
Oh! Are you kidding me?
It's too elastic now.
I knocked all the air out, dammit.
I'm going to prove it again.
One more toss and then I'm done.
Hey, are you all right?
I'm basically down to the wire cos I
had to reprove my bread.
It's fine, no worries.
You look like a pizza. I know.
Pretend to be my pizza, please.
I'll just lie down in front of Paul.
He'll prod you and go,
"A bit overworked."
Bakers, you've got 30 minutes left
to finish your yeasted flat breads
topped with cheese and tomato sauce.
I do think it sounds better if you
just say pizza.
Bakers, you've got 30 minutes left
to finish your pizza.
Pizza topping, here we go.
I think mozzarella should be torn
onto a pizza.
I think I should have done big
chunks of mozzarella.
Little bits of basil on the top.
If I put the basil on now, it will burn.
The bakers are using traditional
Italian peels to get their pizzas
into the hot oven.
And it's crucial they're handled
correctly. That is super annoying.
I should have decorated it on here
because it's just gone a funny
shape.
It might have made it a bit shorter
in the process.
That's going to go in for as long as
it takes to cook.
BEEPING
Ten minutes.
Whoo! Got it in the oven.
My pizza's not a good shape but...
Let's have a look.
Oh, come on. Come on.
My pizza's stuck. God's sake!
Oh, man.
Right, this is actual disaster zone.
Oh, my God!
Oh, my word! Absolute disaster.
Oh, you beauty. Good girl.
How long have I got?
Bakers, you've got 15 minutes.
Hai quindici minuti.
I can totally do it. Come on.
You know we said we had no rolling pin?
There you go. I can toss it.
30 centimetres. Yes, baby.
I can't remember. I don't think
they... I haven't time for this.
Oh, look at it. That's the worst
thing ever.
Let's fan ourselves.
Absently horrendous.
Nobody can know how hot it is.
Of course we've now got ovens on.
Yes, I was six foot tall this
morning and now look at me!
That looks good. It's all right,
isn't it?
I think I'm in the wrong business.
Why, do you think you should be
making a pizza?
I should be making pizzas.
And it's in.
Not far off, you know.
Yeah, it's good.
I don't know if this is going to
work. Definitely time to
come out, I'm not going to overcook
this baby.
It would be nice if it was a bit
more rounded.
I've just taken some of the basil
off cos it doesn't really look
very nice when it's been cooked.
Bakers, that's the end of your
technical challenge.
Bring your pizzas up and stick them
behind your photo.
Be proud.
Can I put mine in the bin?
Absolute disaster.
NOEL: Paul and Prue want to see
a classic home-made margherita with
a crispy base topped with passata,
mozzarella and fresh basil.
We'll start with this one over here.
Cooked on the bottom and nice and
soft in the middle.
I like the end of the slice just to
tip over a bit.
Very good.
It's got a beautiful flavour. And
the dough is well flavoured.
The bread is well flavoured.
It's a nice pizza. OK, very good.
I think that pizza, it is actually a
little thick.
This is more like an English pizza,
rather than an Italian pizza.
A little bit of tang.
Nice tomato coming through at the
end, not bad at all.
So, this one, a bit of a disaster.
I think mainly because the baker put
the topping on the pizza before
putting it on to the peel.
It's very thick because it's
concertinaed up.
Raw dough is not particularly nice
to eat.
This one, I think the mozzarella has
been cut up too finely.
When you chop of little bits of
mozzarella,
you sort of lose it in the passata.
The whole thing is, white, green,
red, the Italian flag.
Let's have a look.
It's too thick, it's under seasoned,
it's just not very exciting to eat.
Right, this one, it's not absolutely
perfectly round but it looks really
good. I like the basil on there as
well, nice green basil.
I love the fact that the edges are
charred a bit.
The flavours are there. The tomato
is good. And it's lovely and thin.
OK, moving onto another one which
looks like it's got stuck on the
peel again.
It's massively under baked.
That is definitely undercooked.
But overall, you could eat most of them.
SANDI: Paul and Prue must now rank
the pizzas from worst to best.
In sixth place is this one.
Whose is this?
Right, you got it stuck an the peel,
I take it? I did. Hence, sixth.
Fifth place is this one.
Yan, it is undercooked
and a bit misshapen.
Stacey came in fourth and Sophie, third.
It's very tricky between
first and second.
In second spot is this one.
Whose is this?
Well done, Liam.
The flavour was very good, the
tomato was good.
I think you made a nice pizza.
So that leaves this one.
Steven, it's a beautiful pizza.
It's very thin, right amount of
scant topping.
The flavour is lovely. Well done.
I love making pizza. I just went off
my own intuition and it worked.
I think I'm in the wrong business.
I should make pizzas. No, I'm
joking!
No, it was really good, really good.
They spotted straightaway that I'd
had issues transferring it
from the palette thing
to the pizza stone
and then it just all went wrong from
there, really.
That plan of trying to nail the
technical to keep myself safe
didn't go to plan!
It's the bakers' last chance to make
a winning impression on Paul and Prue.
The show stopper.
One more attempt to keep their place
in the tent.
For the technical challenge, it
seemed quite simple.
Pizza - it's a classic Italian dish,
but it's actually quite tricky.
Steven, he smashed it. He had the
best pizza.
I think he's coming back because
he's had a couple
of weeks of really struggling.
The thing that pleased me so much is
that Liam's pizza was good.
It was vying with Steven for the top
spot.
He's got stronger and stronger as
the competition has carried on,
and Sophie, actually, she got
the cannoli spot on.
Who, for you, is in trouble this week?
I think Kate. She was last the
technical.
Yan didn't do very well either and
her cannoli wasn't great.
Actually Yan is in real trouble.
Stacey's hovered in the middle for
quite some time now.
Stacey's problem is that she panics.
She's like the John McEnroe of baking!
She is. You might get a saucepan in
the face, or you might get a hug.
Today's going to be even hotter.
As temperatures rise, they fluster
more, and when you fluster more,
you make mistakes.
Buongiorno, bakers.
Welcome to your second day here in
sunny Italy.
So for your show stopper Italiano,
the judges would like you to make
shell-shaped filled pastries of
campana sfogliatella.
I'm sure you know, sfogliatella
means thin leaf, so once baked,
your delicate multi-layered pastries
should resemble crunchy rustling
leaves. The judges would like you to
make a batch of 24 perfectly flaky
pastries, but the filling is up to you.
You have 4.5 hours.
On your marks... Get
set...
BOTH: Infornare!
50 grams of sugar. I know this
recipe off by heart.
I need to do really well today
otherwise I'm in danger of going home.
Quarterfinal. It's like my absolute
goal.
Sfogliatella - it was developed
about 200 years ago in Italy by a nun.
It's layered, a bit like a filo pastry.
It's akin to a lobster tail.
When you bite into it, it cracks in
your mouth.
Inside has to be the most luscious
filling.
We've asked the bakers to make 12 of
them in one flavour,
12 of them in another favour.
The biggest mistake they could do
with this is not building those
layers correctly.
If they don't, they'll all just fall
to pieces in their hands.
It is so, so delicate.
Even I struggled when I was in Italy
making it myself.
I think this challenge is pure murder.
It's the most complex pastry
challenge ever set on Bake Off.
This is leave it to the professionals...
Or six insane bakers in a hot tent.
Knacker me out. Right, our Sicilian
lemons.
Boiled them for an hour.
The lemons are for Steven's
Sicilian-style marmalade.
The other half will be filled with
chocolate, orange and ginger.
I love the idea of the flavours.
This challenge, what did you think
is the trickiest bit of it?
It's getting that flair of leaves
and I was researching this.
Italian chefs that were making this
were saying, A - don't bother,
or B - it's three days.
4.5 hours is all you've got.
And you have to bother. It is
doable.
It is. It's just very complicated
and it can be extremely...
Don't smile, you picked it!
I've got my dough resting in the
freezer.
So I'm just preparing my filling.
Semolina with some ricotta.
It's basically the thickener for the
sfogliatella. Everybody's doing this
bit.
While the semolina's hot,
I'm going to fold this chocolate so
it combines into it.
So tell us about your sfogliatella.
It's inspired by my trips to Canada.
During the Women's World Cup,
I went to a bakery every day to get
the most delicious lemon,
blueberry scones.
Yan's filling her other half with
maple, pecan, topped with bacon dust.
Maple, bacon, pecan, that's so Canadian.
How come you go to Canada so often?
Because my wife used to work for a
Canadian bank.
They offered her a job over there.
OK. She took redundancy because
we're Londoners.
Londoners through and through.
I've got a maple pecan sfogliatella.
I know Yan's doing maple pecan as
well, but she's added bacon.
To be fair, I have bacon in
the fridge and I was going to do it,
but I was like, "Nah!"
Liam's other filling is orange, rum
and raisin.
And he's found a unique way to
display them.
I've got fake ice.
It looks like lobster tails, right?
So the whole theme is, like, just
caught them from the sea.
My grandad used to deliver all
different types of seafood to different
restaurants and places across the
country.
I love the personal sort of aspect
of it.
I'm just starting to put it through
the machine.
To make just 24 sfogliatella will
take a lengthy 14 metres of pastry.
Is anyone else enjoying this?
Nope. Taxi!
It's very labour intensive.
So much pastry.
If it tears, you just need to start
again.
It's a bit of a beast at the moment.
This can't be right.
Are you OK?
I'm OK. I'll just put these through
again.
So I'm starting to roll my dough now.
This is kind of the important bit.
This is what forms the leaves.
I'm just spreading some lard over it.
That's where you get the flaky,
crunchy thing that you want.
I'm going to stretch it out.
This is going to be one massive sausage.
Show us how you do it. That's only
that wide and I need to get 24 out
of it anyway.
I'm just stretching it out gently
because if you do it too
much, you make a hole.
Why is it not a technical challenge?
Why is it a show stopper? Time.
It takes hours and hours to produce.
It seems like a massive technical
show stopper.
It is, isn't it?
Really hard. Have you seen one
before?
No, my mum and dad went on honeymoon
to the Amalfi Coast and I'm just
going off purely hearsay, what they
say it is.
Kate is filling half with an Italian
style mix of chocolate and hazelnuts,
and the other with a less
traditional lemon and tahini.
Tahini? Tahini.
That's quite savoury, isn't it?
I took a bit of a risk but I decided
to do it just because I like
experimenting with new flavours.
Sophie, though, is keeping it simple.
Mango and passion fruit is a classic
combination.
Her other filling is cherry, almond
and chocolate.
I don't want anything too wacky with
the filling or the flavours.
I just want to think about the
pastry, getting the pastry right.
It looks like a pair of underpants!
Does it? Maybe yours!
Mine don't look like that, Paul!
So tell us about your sfogliatella?
I'm doing two different things.
Citrus and sultanas.
The second one, praline cream.
I've made the praline already.
It's there.
Stacey's giving her praline creme
pats sfogliatella an extra boost by
lining them with choux pastry.
So you're just putting the choux
paste inside?
Yes, and hopefully the choux paste,
the choux part will puff up and I'll
be able to fill it.
The only problem is, as soon as you
put them in the oven,
they've got a mind of their own.
It's a gamble but I'm doing it.
The ones you practised, nine times
out of ten, they came out fine?
The ones I practised, nine times out
of ten, they didn't.
Two hours in. It's boiling hot.
Yes, we're trying to get an Italian
atmosphere for you.
Oh, right!
The temperature has hit 40 degrees.
Oh, it is boiling!
And rising heat...
It's sticky, which I would prefer
that it wasn't.
...makes rolling wafer thin pastry
easier said than done.
In this heat, the last thing you
want is anything that's going to
melt. Oh, the butter's melting.
It's just ruining my pastry, this heat.
I think it's beyond repair now.
How's it going? It's splitting and
it's hot.
Look at her, she's like a machine
over there.
I could just walk around like that
for you.
When I was at school, I always had,
"Stacey has the potential to do
really well.
"However, she doesn't concentrate."
When I don't concentrate, things go
wrong and unfortunately,
I can use about that much. I just
don't have enough dough.
Bakers, you've got one hour remaining.
Cut it into 24 pieces.
It's the moment of truth.
Time to see if their rolling has
been a success.
I'm just about to start the shaping
of my sfogliatella.
It's supposed to resemble a lobster
tail or wheel of lamination.
Lamination is baker talk for
multiple layers.
Can you see all those layers?
No lamination...
These are no good.
These are going to be ugliatelle!
...may mean going home.
Well, they look like lobster tails.
What? What sort of lobster have you
seen?
I've got a pet lobster and his tail
is exactly like that.
Please don't look at them.
They're fine! There's nothing to see
here!
This is the choux pastry one, which
is so tiny.
I'm sure someone said they wanted
them to be really small,
and very uneven in size.
Yeah, mine aren't even. Don't even
talk about yours!
God, they're looking stunning, Sophie.
Thanks, mate! Just 23 more of them
to do!
I'm going to present 24
sfogliatella, whether it..
It might well kill me.
They never said I had to be alive to
take the judgment.
If you die, I will step in for you.
Thank you, avenge my death.
Anything I can do to help?
To be honest with you, you're the
least of my problems!
This is hot.
I'm sitting on an ice bath just to
stop it literally melting in front
of me.
God, look at this state of them.
They're just absolutely melting.
It's just hell.
They're just melting.
It's just not right.
God, Almighty!
Oh, God, that will just be a
makeshift one.
Oh, he has to come when it's the one
that's flopped.
Look at my other ones in the fridge!
Please?
Such a wind-up merchant.
Oh!
Bakers, you have 30 minutes.
Trenta minuti.
I'm so far behind.
The dough isn't behaving itself.
I'm just going to stick these in the
freezer for a sec because they're
melting.
Not worth the calories.
You don't want to get that from free.
Anyone for a canape?
Can you imagine if you got that in
the shop?
You'd be like, "How much? I'm not
paying for that!"
Let's just get this pain over and
done with, shall we?
I'm going to put these in for 15, 20
minutes.
As the fat cooks, it will just push
the layers apart.
Come on, little babies, laminate.
It's all about when it goes in the
oven and how it looks.
You just don't know.
Time? Not doing great,
because I've got 16 minutes to put
them in the oven for half an hour.
I think the reality of the situation
is mine are pretty terrible.
And they're going in. Oh, no
lamination.
I'm going to get screwed over.
No lamination? No lamination.
Oh, man. I don't think no lamination
is the end of the world.
You know, I'm not laminated and I'm
having a great time!
When I look at it, they freak me out.
You have ten minutes.
Dieci minuti.
Have you got enough time to bake
them? God, no!
On the hottest day of the year, he
puts gloves on!
It's a very stressful gig, this.
That is it.
Crapalatelle!
My choux puffed too much because the
whole thing has gone...
It's very depressing.
Look at the state of them. What do
you want, bigger?
Bigger gaps? Bigger. Everybody wants
bigger, don't they?
Different colour? Just everything
but what they are.
The filling does taste great. I
haven't got it in yet. Let's
just see if I can get it in without
it all spilling out.
Absolutely ludicrous.
It's melting.
Come on.
Come on. At least yours are cooked!
The pastry cream is leaking out
everywhere.
Shooting out of every orifice.
That is weather related. And that's
a bit of a problem for me because
the only reason why I did the
choux pastry in the first place was
to put the lovely creme pat inside,
so it's gone from disaster to
disaster to disaster.
Three, two, one, now.
Bakers, you've got one minute left.
Maybe drop them? I can see her over
there, cool as ice.
If all else fails, put on some icing
sugar!
Five... Four...
Three... Two...
One...
It's very upsetting.
Bakers, that is the end of your show
stopper challenge.
The last Italian challenge.
We can all have a nice espresso martini.
Out you go from this unbelievably
hot tent.
It's definitely the heat. It's not
my fault!
It's judgment time for the bakers.
Pfft!
Liam, would you like to bring up
your sfogliatelle?
Liam, I think that presentation is
just fantastic.
Lobster tails on ice.
It's just amazing to look at.
They're inconsistent in size, but I
think you've got great lamination.
I think the layers are fantastic.
Maple and pecan, delicious.
What have you got inside this?
Rum-soaked raisins, orange zest.
The orange comes through in that
one, actually.
Flavour's lovely.
I know that took hours,
and it's a hell of an achievement.
Steven, please bring up
your sfogliatelle.
Proper showstopper.
Lobster tail, excellent lamination.
Style. Come on, substance!
Style box is ticked...
...and substance.
Yes!
The chocolate, that little bit of
heat that comes from the ginger is
delicious. Sicilian lemon tastes
really Italian.
It goes rather flaky in your mouth
because the pastry is so perfect.
What you've done is sfogliatelle
which are authentic.
I think you could sell them
in any pastry shop in Italy.
Well done. Thank you.
Great lamination.
You've got that classic lobster tail
running all the way through.
The time that you've spent on it,
you can see the intricacy.
So this is the cherry? Yeah.
Mmm. It's got a nice bitterness
to it which I think works inside.
I think that's like crisp leaves,
chewing it,
you get the passion fruit and mango.
It is quite a showstopper.
I must say I'm a bit disappointed,
not only in the way that they look,
the sfogliatelle,
but also because this was supposed
to be showstopper presentation,
and it doesn't look
as if you're proud of them.
Lamination, there's big problems
with that.
These look as though they've been
sat on.
Hazelnut chocolate. Certainly got
the hazelnut.
Tahini and lemon.
Actually it's quite pleasant.
If you close your eyes and eat it
you think, that's great.
But then you open your eyes and see
it and go, "Ah."
You're not getting much lamination.
Oh!
Maple and bacon, it's extremely
Canadian.
The flavour's lovely, but
the consistency is quite doughy.
The creme pat and the blueberry,
these ones are quite raw.
You're obviously disappointed,
and in a way we're a bit
disappointed, too.
Bit of a mess. Total mess.
Stacey, please bring up
your sfogliatelle.
Um...
Sfoglia... Sfogliatini, so
they're for the kids. Oh, I see.
The lamination is very poor
and there's too much icing sugar
on there, which is unusual for you,
normally you smash something like
this and it looks good.
It's the heat, I think.
Citrus and raisin.
I like that filling.
I think it's the right degree
of sweetness.
It's very runny for a creme pat.
You were so ambitious to do a choux
paste middle.
Your nightmare's come true,
the choux bun's burst out and, on
the top there, you have raw dough.
I appreciate the fact
that it's extremely difficult to do,
but everyone was in the same boat,
and we have to judge accordingly.
I agree. This one, I think you've
let yourself down a little bit.
I think it was close to, in old
money, 100 degrees in the tent.
Have either of you ever worked
anywhere that was hotter?
I worked in Hong Kong in July, in
an un-air-conditioned hotel kitchen.
I can better that.
THEY LAUGH
When I was working in the bakery
and the temperature was 50 degrees,
all I had on was shorts.
When I was a fire juggler, I lived
on the edge of the volcano...
THEY LAUGH
...but I got on with it.
So getting to this, Sophie and
Steven both in a very good place,
is that still the case? Yes,
that's certainly the case.
Both Steven and Sophie are very
skilful with their fingers.
Liam's was a little bit tardy
on the overall size differences
but the lamination he
managed to get, very clever.
So Liam, Sophie and Steven for Star
Baker, and who's in the danger zone?
PRUE: Yan struggled
and she knew that.
I mean, she didn't
achieve any lamination.
They were undercooked.
I mean there was a whole heap
of things wrong with Yan's.
Yan's struggled,
hasn't she, all weekend?
She has. I think Yan's
had a terrible week.
I think Kate's there as well.
It did look hideous.
SANDI: What about Stacey?
Not worth the calories.
My ultimate test.
Fantastically well done to everybody.
I have never seen anybody have to do
such a tremendously difficult
challenge in this astonishing heat!
It was really, really tough.
It is my pleasure to announce
this week's Star Baker.
The Star Baker is the person who
brought the flavours of Italy
absolutely bursting into
our mouths with the cannoli
and whose sfogliatella was
a laminate perfection.
The Star Baker is Steven.
APPLAUSE
Obviously that means
I've got the horrible job
of announcing the baker
who's leaving us.
The person who's leaving
us this week is...
Oh, my God.
...Yan. I'm sorry. It's OK.
We'll always have Basil.
I'm so sorry.
That's OK. Don't be sorry.
I thought it was me. I know you did,
I could see it on your face.
It was close!
You did really well.
Thank you. I'm amazed
how far I've come.
It's been a difficult, tough...
An amazing experience.
It's been...
...the best.
I'm so sorry.
I'm not sorry, it's OK.
I've had a wonderful adventure.
Have you had a good time?
A totally wonderful adventure.
Thank you so much. Poor Yan.
I mean, everybody loves Yan and I'm
as sorry as anybody to see her go.
Come here. I love you.
Come here. It's OK, don't worry.
I'm still in shock.
I'm super excited but
I'm super upset for Yan.
Absolutely gobsmacked.
Gobsmacked.
When they said "Yan" I
nearly fainted off my chair.
I'm just so shocked, I'm so sorry,
I'm shocked to my core.
No, no, no, but I'm not. Well done.
Thank you. Steven's back!
He had style and substance.
I'm floating on that cloud again.
I've gone all this way.
It's mad, mad.
Mad, mad, mad, mad.
So good.
I feel proud but more shocked, I think!
I'm a quarterfinalist in
The Great British Bake Off.
It's brilliant. Next week...
Who has ever heard of this before?
...the tent goes back in
time with forgotten bakes.
Maybe you know what you're doing?
Come on now! A signature
that's sweet AND savoury...
Nice clanger. Sounds delicious.
...a technical tart
full of bygone booze...
No more rum. Whoo!
...and in a feat of
Victorian engineering...
Go big or go home.
...the most elaborate
sponge Showstopper...
Cake's in. Macaroons.
...the bakers have ever faced.
Easy!
six bakers left
and, boy, are they going to need
some skills today!
Hey, Sandi, what are you doing?
I'm making pizza.
Paul's been teaching me how to toss.
He is an expert.
Welcome to The Great British Bake Off.
Last time... I hate rushing.
It's not me... the bakers got to
grips with pastry.
Sophie came close again.
Beautifully done.
But it was Liam...
Spectacular! ..winning Star Baker
for the very first time.
I am so embarrassed.
Kate and Stacey were close to cracking.
Meh! But it was Julia who crumbled
under the pressure...
My pastry is absolutely rank.
I'm so sorry.
...becoming the sixth
baker to say farewell.
Now for the first time ever, it's
Italian week on Bake Off...
Si, buongiorno, come stai?
...with temperatures to match.
Oh, it is boiling.
The bakers take on one of Sicily's
favourite street foods...
What am I doing?
...tackle a classic that's not as
simple as they think...
Absolute disaster.
...and attempt the most complex of
Italian pastries.
Hell, is what it is.
Hell.
Are you sure this canal goes all the
way from Berkshire to Venice?
Yeah, it's one of Britain's best
kept secrets.
A bit like the fact that we're doing
the first ever Italian week on
Bake Off. I am so excited, I cannot
wait to get started.
Me too. Actually though,
I think this might take a bit longer
than I thought.
If you're a gondolier, shouldn't you
be singing to me?
Yeah, fair enough. What do you want?
Rage Against The Machine?
Kanye West? Do you know? I think
I'll walk.
I could do something smoother.
Luther Vandross? No longer
listening, start the show.
It's shaping up to be the hottest
day in the tent... ever.
It is going to be like Valley of the
Kings in that tent today.
Valley of the Cakes, I think!
If we have to do the naked Bake Off,
so be it.
I'm still here, can you believe it?
They can't get rid of me!
Hopefully they won't get rid of me
this week either.
Star Baker last week was...
Yeah, it was sick,
but literally I enjoyed it
for, like, one day.
I've got to crack on with Italian
week now.
Oh, Italian week.
It's like boot camp for bakers.
I absolutely love Italy.
Hopefully by the end of the weekend,
I still will!
Morning, bakers, or should I say,
buongiorno, bakers!
I'm so excited about Italian week,
I've designed my own Italian shirt.
Italian stallion.
Pony. More of a pony!
Right, Prue and Paul would like you
to make your version of the Sicilian
classic cannoli, so those little
fried pastry tubes.
Apparently every self-respecting
Sicilian mother, and even one or two
with no respect at all, has her own
version of this recipe.
The judges would like you to make 18
with three different flavoured
fillings. Obviously your tubes must
be identical.
Nobody wants mismatched tubes.
No, that is painful.
You've got 2.5 hours.
On your marks... Get set...
BOTH: ..infornare!
Ciao, bellissimo.
Isn't that Italian? I don't-a know!
The one thing I have learned is that
you respect Italian food
and Italians.
The Sicilian cannoli is a tube of
deep-fried pastry,
filled with a ricotta sweet mixture.
Just to make it a little harder,
we've told them they have to have
three different fillings.
The most difficult thing about
making a cannoli is getting the
shell right.
They must be beautiful golden brown
and it must have bubbles
when you're frying it. This is very
characteristic of a cannoli.
The luscious filling,
it mustn't run out.
You should be able to eat it in your
hand without a mess.
All right, it's very hot today and
we're asking the bakers to make
cannoli, but they make them in
Palermo in the middle of summer
and that can be 45 degrees.
No excuses.
So, I'm just making my
dough for my 18 cannolis.
We're going to add vinegar, quite an
unusual ingredient.
This is the science bit.
Vinegar evaporates quickly and
creates bubbles.
Getting the balance right...
160g.
...is crucial to achieving the
perfect cannoli shell.
I don't want to put too much in.
I don't want it to be a sticky mess.
Good morning, Liam. Hi, Liam.
Hello. Right, tell us all about your
cannoli.
So, my cannolis are inspired by me,
basically, how I am as a person.
I love that, it's a narcissistic
cannoli!
HE LAUGHS
My mates say I have a cheesy sort of
sense of humour.
So I'm going for a lemon cheesecake
cannoli,
and then I eat a lot of Turkish food
in my spare time, so my second one
is inspired by baklava.
As well as his lemon cheesecake flavour,
and baklava-inspired honey and nuts,
Liam's third filling
is marshmallow and chocolate.
My dad took me camping a couple of
years ago.
Camping always reminds me of
marshmallows and chocolate.
I love the idea of the flavours.
Have you been practising?
Yeah, 100%.
I don't know how many cannolis I've
been through this week, but...
You haven't been practising,
have you? I have! Why don't
you believe me?!
He's like the godfather of the
Bake Off tent!
One egg plus yolk.
For Steven, every week is Italian week.
I have family in Italy.
My grandfather was Italian,
but unfortunately,
it's not done much to help me here today
because I don't think I ever saw him
make cannoli.
Steven's adding Italian style to his
cannoli with coffee and hazelnuts,
almond praline and Italian lemon curd.
The reason I'm using Italian lemons
is not just because it's Italian
week, but they are incredible,
the flavour and the smell.
They do produce some incredible food
and that's why we love it.
Hello, Stacey. What are you doing?
What's your cannoli?
I have a jam roly cannoli.
It was jam roly-poly cannoli but I
took out the poly.
Stacey is also making cheesecake and
tiramisu fillings.
And she's adding cocoa powder
to her dough.
I decided to do a new twist.
How are you going to know when your
cannoli shells are cooked,
because they're going to be brown,
aren't they?
Yeah. I just sort of know.
I feel like I know.
But I might not, we'll see.
This is going to chill out in the
fridge.
I'm just going to start my fillings now.
The bakers are aiming for flavours
that will make their cannoli truly
eccezionale.
I'm just creaming together my
marshmallow and meringue,
and then my other batch,
walnuts and pistachios.
I'm doing Kate's happy hour,
Italian cocktail cannoli.
This is my favourite drink
of all time. Have a bit!
Kate's minibar is officially open!
Oh, it's so good!
So good! Hwah-ha!
Kate's cocktail flavours will
include limoncello,
Negroni and espresso martini.
It's not a proper night out if you
don't have at least three espresso
martinis!
What you don't want to do is put too
much alcohol in it,
it just overwhelms everything.
I had one once, an espresso martini,
and at the end of drinking it,
I gave away all my jewellery to
strangers!
A terrifying drink.
Kate's not the only baker heading
for the cocktail cabinet.
These flavours have come from
a night out.
Yan's filling one with
Amaretto-infused mint,
rose and lime.
Another with honey and Amaretto.
The third is passion fruit and
vanilla, and like Stacey,
she's also adding cocoa powder to
her dough.
Do you get the telltale bubbles on
your cannoli?
Yes, I do. But what I'm finding is,
I can't see it when it turns the
correct colour to take them out,
so I'm relying on instinct.
Now I'm just making the base for all
18 cannoli across three flavours.
The thickener, that's the most
important thing.
Hopefully my filling will be nice
and tough
and not fall out of the tube.
I'm going to add the ricotta.
It's the ricotta base one.
Ricotta is the traditional base
and most of the bakers are sticking
with this Italian favourite.
I don't want to play around with
classics, especially Sicilian,
because I imagine they'd probably
get quite cranky.
I'm doing ricotta.
I just didn't want crowds of angry
Italians saying,
"That's not traditional! What is she
doing? She's messing around."
I'd probably find a horse's head in
my bed the next day if I did that.
But one of the bakers...
We're not here to do exactly as per
the Sicilians,
we're here to sort of put our
own spin and adapt recipes.
...isn't afraid to take on
tradition.
Are you using Sicilian sheep's milk,
ricotta?
I'm not using any ricotta.
Sophie's filling one with
Amaretto and almond,
another with limoncello cream and
the third with a mix of chocolate
and hazelnuts. Where's the ricotta?
I'm using mascarpone. What?!
In a cannoli? Yes.
Why? I think the texture's a lot
nicer.
Oh, God, what? It's a cannoli!
It has ricotta in it. Does it have
to be ricotta?
Obviously an apple pie's got to have
apple in it,
you can't make it with pear.
It's highly unusual.
It's not really that weird.
It is if you're in Sicily.
How does this set then?
I am using gelatine.
Gelatine as well! Are they still
going to be recognisable cannoli?
They will definitely be cannoli.
They're a little twist.
Bakers, according to the pasta clock,
you are halfway through your challenge.
I can assure you, this guy is
usually pretty accurate.
I've got my dough.
I'm passing it through the pasta roller.
This gets rolled out quite thinly.
What's important is that it's thin
enough for it to be nice and light,
but it's thick enough to make bubbles.
It needs the bubbles.
It's a balancing act.
Do I look like I know what I'm doing?
It's just, how thin am I going to go?
I've gone for, like, a
one millimetre thickness.
Too thick and the pastry won't cook.
Too thin and the bubbles won't appear.
There's a set of rules that you have
to follow and if you don't,
then you get stung.
Right, cut it.
I'm going to roll this out.
Are you all right?
I'm just hot.
The winner of this gets to lie down
in a child's paddling pool full of
ice cold water. Everyone should lie
down in a child's paddling pool!
Ah! That's quite nice, isn't it?
Today the tent is hotter than Palermo.
And they're deep frying, poor things.
It's about to get even hotter.
Cos what you want to do in this
heat is put more clothes on.
Don't want to burn myself.
Health and safety first.
If we're splashed with hot oil, it's
going to really, really hurt.
Let's do this.
In they go.
This bit is the most important bit.
I just hope they don't separate.
Seal the edges.
If you don't seal them, it just
comes straight off the form
and just floats to the top
like a poppadom.
Great, it's poppadom week!
Why did that just ping off the mould?
I'm not impressed. Oh, God!
Some of them are just floating up.
So that is one minute 15.
That's not enough.
Ew!
I can't tell when it's done.
What I do find fascinating is,
Stacey and Yan added a little bit of
cocoa powder to the mixture.
It's quite dark.
How will she know when it's fried?
I tell when I'm deep frying
something by the colour.
Are you all right?
Oh, dear, that's not good!
And this is what it's not supposed
to look like.
It was a shame because that was a
good-looking one.
It's not the day, is it? No.
Yeah, I totally want to do this
on a really hot day.
Do you want me to somehow block the sun?
If you could, that would be great.
I'll put a call into the moon. Thank
you, my darling. See you in a bit.
They're making bubbles.
You want the bubbles on the surface
of it.
Bubbles are really important.
Some of them haven't got as many
bubbles as I'd like, so I'm going to
do those ones again.
And I really don't want to run out
of time.
Right, fillings.
Smashed up almond praline.
The chocolate espresso one is under way.
Lemon cheesecake.
Bakers, you have 15 minutes.
You see, these are better.
I've got 15 minutes.
I'm not going to have time to fill
them if I don't get on.
It's weird, it's not as thick as it
is normally.
As soon as it hits the really hot
weather here,
it's getting quite liquid already.
Oh, my God, it's all coming out the
sides.
This is a disaster!
Just a disaster.
SHE SIGHS
Stop shaking.
I think I'm one short.
I've lost a shell.
Bakers, you have just ten minutes.
Oh, under pressure, immense pressure.
Hey, Stace, I'm coming in, but only
briefly and then I'm leaving.
OK, I'm going out. I'll come in,
you go out. Sorry!
The little tube has fallen off.
What am I doing?
Oh, man!
You've got one minute, bakers.
60 seconds to make it count.
You can do it, come on.
I can't believe what I've done.
The raspberries were supposed to go
at the end of these,
but I've only gone and put them on
the other ones, haven't I?
I'm so upset.
My hands always shake when it comes
to the last couple of minutes.
Bakers, time's up.
It's too hot.
They look a mess.
The bakers' cannoli now face
the judgment of Paul and Prue.
Hi, Stacey. Hi.
Is that not meant to be like that?
No, and I'll tell you why.
What's basically happened is,
I put the raspberries on the end of
the wrong ones.
I dipped them in the wrong thing.
It's formed bubbles, it has got some
bubbles on there.
Tiramisu? Yeah.
Great flavours, tiramisu.
That cheesecake one is absolutely
beautiful.
But the pastry, it's a bit doughy.
Let's have a raspberry one.
A bit chewy. It shouldn't be chewy.
It's underdone.
The pastry dough started off brown.
It's very difficult to tell looking
at it when their deep-fried enough.
When you were holding that one,
I couldn't tell what was fingers
and what was cannoli.
I think you should rename them,
Hollywood Fingers!
Do you know what? I might do.
Little Stumps!
Great shell. Really beautiful
bubbles.
OK, let's look at this marshmallow
chocolate.
Well, OK. It's pouring out, isn't
it?
Yeah. Probably not the best choice
for a filling.
The lemony one is delicious.
Very good. What's this one again?
Pistachios, walnuts, ricotta.
You can really taste all of that,
sensational. Cheers.
Look at the bubbles on that, it's
perfect.
We have milk chocolate, honey
and almond praline.
I love the flavour. The praline in
there, particularly, is very good.
Steven, that mocha one is very
unctuous, lovely.
This is Italian lemon curd.
Very sharp.
It is sharp.
The flavour of that with the
Italian lemon is delicious.
It's so sharp. Well done.
My biggest concern is, I don't see
too many bubbles on them.
Some of them look quite flat,
without too much activation.
The pastry itself is very, very thin.
Remind us of this one.
Mint, lime and rose.
A nice bit of tartness.
The flavours in that are lovely.
Honey and amaretto.
I don't think that's mean to happen.
Bartender's always ready for you!
Your pastry is too tender.
Because I didn't squish that hard,
it just fell to pieces.
The cocoa has fooled you into
thinking it's ready. Probably could
have done with a little bit
longer. Think your shells
have let you down. Hm.
They're certainly not quite
identical, are they?
Some of them are a bit shorter,
some of them are more bubbly.
Got quite a few bubbles on some of them.
This is the Martini one, is that
right? Yeah, espresso, yeah.
Not a very alcoholic.
I'm a little disappointed, I thought
there would be more.
This one? Limoncello.
I think the alcohol is all right.
This is the negroni.
Very orangey. The ricotta in that
one, particularly, you can taste,
which is delicious. Thank you.
So, I have a lemon, lime and ginger,
an amaretto and almond,
and hazelnut and chocolate.
I've tried it with ricotta, I just
prefer them with mascarpone.
Right, it's going to be fascinating
to try it with the mascarpone.
It's going to be interesting to see
how this set in the shell itself.
This is a real test!
Mm!
It doesn't pour all down, it holds.
Yeah, very good. This not at all
sloppy.
I think you might have converted me.
Awesome, thank you.
The almond and amaretto. Mm!
That is heaven.
You've got a slight dryness coming
through in the flavouring as well.
OK.
Yeah, I think you've got three
very good cannolis there.
If cannoli on the streets of Sicily
tasted like these,
I'd be very happy. I'm not sure I'd
be welcome after my use of
mascarpone, though!
I think you should take that in when
you get your next spray tan,
for the colour!
I think you should take that one in!
HE LAUGHS
Thank you very much indeed.
Very good. Thank you.
I was a little bit concerned, but
that went a lot better than I
thought it was going to.
He was playing with his jaw
and I thought,
I know that feeling. You know when
you eat something really sharp,
it gets you right here.
You cannot afford even to mess up
a little bit here now.
Every single challenge counts.
It's very, very, very stressful.
Ciao, bakers, it's time for Italian
week's technical challenge,
set for you by the lovely Signora Prue.
Do you have any advice for the
baking bambinos?
ITALIAN TRANSLATION:
Well, I don't think that could have
been any more helpful.
Judges, I'm going to have to ask you
to leave the tent, please.
Prue, you can get on with your novel.
Paul has enroled in a mime class.
For today's technical challenge,
Prue and Paul would like you to make
an Italian classic, pizza!
We want a perfectly made margherita.
You've got an hour and a half. On
your marks... Get set...
BOTH: Infornare.
I don't actually know what pizza is.
No, I'm joking!
Basically, it's bread with a bit of
cheese on top.
What's the worst that could happen?
So, Prue, why have you chosen a
pizza margherita as the technical
challenge? Well, it's one of those
things that everyone thinks is easy,
and actually it's quite difficult
to get right.
The dough, it's got to stretch
because you want it to be really,
really thin. Have you left them with
rolling pins?
No, we took their rolling pins away.
We thought they might fling it up
and get it round.
A bit of throwing, press with the
fingers, a bit of throwing?
That's the traditional way to do it.
You've got the classic Italian flag,
the white, the red and green.
It's a sacred thing, the pizza
margherita to the Italians.
It really is important if they're
going to use basil to put it
on at the end.
It tastes better raw.
It has to be cooked until it just
begins to blacken.
Crisp dough, on the outside,
bending over in the middle.
I think they will find it tougher
than they think.
"200g of flour,
half a teaspoon of fine salt,
"2tbsp of olive oil."
"Add the yeast to the remaining
dough ingredients to make the
dough. Knead."
I'm not really sure what a pizza
dough is meant to be like.
Prue said something like...
Na-na-na, na ah, nah!
Magra is thin.
Bellissima means beautiful.
She also said croccante, at the end,
which means crispy.
HE LAUGHS
It's almost there, bouncing back.
Come on, baby.
Give it like a couple more kneads
and then be able to prove.
I don't think we need the proving
drawer in this temperature.
I'm just going to clingfilm it.
Right, prove it for an hour?
I don't know how long.
Usually you leave it until it has
doubled in size.
BEEPING
Are you playing a video game, Liam?
It just says make a tomato sauce,
which is helpful.
Chopping some garlic.
They give you no quantities
on the tomatoes, olive oil, garlic
or lemon juice.
Can I hold that for you?
You how much we love you!
I'm not sure how much garlic to do.
What do you think?
Just put the tomatoes in.
Making sure it's probably nice
and thick and rich.
Now they've got lemon juice in
there. Strange.
I'm sure you add the lemon juice at
the end.
I might do a little bit now.
A pinch of caster sugar in to
balance it out.
I'm sure I've done it wrong.
I've just chopped the end of my
finger off on the fan.
Don't worry. Oh, God, I'm going to
faint.
Do you want a glass of water? What
happened? My finger went in the fan.
Someone has badly stitched the
health and safety inspector.
It's all fine, I've had a look, it's
fine.
Have you finished massacring yourself?
Yeah. I once took a plaster off and
I actually passed out.
In terms of stories for dinner parties,
I wouldn't lead with that one.
Bakers, you are halfway through your
pizza delivery time.
What are you doing? I'm being the
leaning Tower of Pizza.
OK, I'm going now. OK.
It should be double in size for the
dough so that's perfect.
Shape and toss enough of the dough
to make a 30cm base.
There's no rolling pin.
Sneaky. Sneaky, Prue.
Of course you don't have a rolling pin.
I've never done freehand like this.
The whole point of that,
you've got equal force going around
all the entire pizza, so it brings
it all out, but it could fall on the
floor and I'd have to make it again.
Now? Not yet.
OK. It's too scary, man.
I don't know!
I might sort of flatten it out by hand.
I'm just going to stretch it like this.
I'm not going to toss it because I
can't because I've injured myself.
What about now? No, not yet.
Go on, I'll take responsibility.
Go on. Go on, go on, go on.
A bit higher. I'm not.
Oh! Are you kidding me?
It's too elastic now.
I knocked all the air out, dammit.
I'm going to prove it again.
One more toss and then I'm done.
Hey, are you all right?
I'm basically down to the wire cos I
had to reprove my bread.
It's fine, no worries.
You look like a pizza. I know.
Pretend to be my pizza, please.
I'll just lie down in front of Paul.
He'll prod you and go,
"A bit overworked."
Bakers, you've got 30 minutes left
to finish your yeasted flat breads
topped with cheese and tomato sauce.
I do think it sounds better if you
just say pizza.
Bakers, you've got 30 minutes left
to finish your pizza.
Pizza topping, here we go.
I think mozzarella should be torn
onto a pizza.
I think I should have done big
chunks of mozzarella.
Little bits of basil on the top.
If I put the basil on now, it will burn.
The bakers are using traditional
Italian peels to get their pizzas
into the hot oven.
And it's crucial they're handled
correctly. That is super annoying.
I should have decorated it on here
because it's just gone a funny
shape.
It might have made it a bit shorter
in the process.
That's going to go in for as long as
it takes to cook.
BEEPING
Ten minutes.
Whoo! Got it in the oven.
My pizza's not a good shape but...
Let's have a look.
Oh, come on. Come on.
My pizza's stuck. God's sake!
Oh, man.
Right, this is actual disaster zone.
Oh, my God!
Oh, my word! Absolute disaster.
Oh, you beauty. Good girl.
How long have I got?
Bakers, you've got 15 minutes.
Hai quindici minuti.
I can totally do it. Come on.
You know we said we had no rolling pin?
There you go. I can toss it.
30 centimetres. Yes, baby.
I can't remember. I don't think
they... I haven't time for this.
Oh, look at it. That's the worst
thing ever.
Let's fan ourselves.
Absently horrendous.
Nobody can know how hot it is.
Of course we've now got ovens on.
Yes, I was six foot tall this
morning and now look at me!
That looks good. It's all right,
isn't it?
I think I'm in the wrong business.
Why, do you think you should be
making a pizza?
I should be making pizzas.
And it's in.
Not far off, you know.
Yeah, it's good.
I don't know if this is going to
work. Definitely time to
come out, I'm not going to overcook
this baby.
It would be nice if it was a bit
more rounded.
I've just taken some of the basil
off cos it doesn't really look
very nice when it's been cooked.
Bakers, that's the end of your
technical challenge.
Bring your pizzas up and stick them
behind your photo.
Be proud.
Can I put mine in the bin?
Absolute disaster.
NOEL: Paul and Prue want to see
a classic home-made margherita with
a crispy base topped with passata,
mozzarella and fresh basil.
We'll start with this one over here.
Cooked on the bottom and nice and
soft in the middle.
I like the end of the slice just to
tip over a bit.
Very good.
It's got a beautiful flavour. And
the dough is well flavoured.
The bread is well flavoured.
It's a nice pizza. OK, very good.
I think that pizza, it is actually a
little thick.
This is more like an English pizza,
rather than an Italian pizza.
A little bit of tang.
Nice tomato coming through at the
end, not bad at all.
So, this one, a bit of a disaster.
I think mainly because the baker put
the topping on the pizza before
putting it on to the peel.
It's very thick because it's
concertinaed up.
Raw dough is not particularly nice
to eat.
This one, I think the mozzarella has
been cut up too finely.
When you chop of little bits of
mozzarella,
you sort of lose it in the passata.
The whole thing is, white, green,
red, the Italian flag.
Let's have a look.
It's too thick, it's under seasoned,
it's just not very exciting to eat.
Right, this one, it's not absolutely
perfectly round but it looks really
good. I like the basil on there as
well, nice green basil.
I love the fact that the edges are
charred a bit.
The flavours are there. The tomato
is good. And it's lovely and thin.
OK, moving onto another one which
looks like it's got stuck on the
peel again.
It's massively under baked.
That is definitely undercooked.
But overall, you could eat most of them.
SANDI: Paul and Prue must now rank
the pizzas from worst to best.
In sixth place is this one.
Whose is this?
Right, you got it stuck an the peel,
I take it? I did. Hence, sixth.
Fifth place is this one.
Yan, it is undercooked
and a bit misshapen.
Stacey came in fourth and Sophie, third.
It's very tricky between
first and second.
In second spot is this one.
Whose is this?
Well done, Liam.
The flavour was very good, the
tomato was good.
I think you made a nice pizza.
So that leaves this one.
Steven, it's a beautiful pizza.
It's very thin, right amount of
scant topping.
The flavour is lovely. Well done.
I love making pizza. I just went off
my own intuition and it worked.
I think I'm in the wrong business.
I should make pizzas. No, I'm
joking!
No, it was really good, really good.
They spotted straightaway that I'd
had issues transferring it
from the palette thing
to the pizza stone
and then it just all went wrong from
there, really.
That plan of trying to nail the
technical to keep myself safe
didn't go to plan!
It's the bakers' last chance to make
a winning impression on Paul and Prue.
The show stopper.
One more attempt to keep their place
in the tent.
For the technical challenge, it
seemed quite simple.
Pizza - it's a classic Italian dish,
but it's actually quite tricky.
Steven, he smashed it. He had the
best pizza.
I think he's coming back because
he's had a couple
of weeks of really struggling.
The thing that pleased me so much is
that Liam's pizza was good.
It was vying with Steven for the top
spot.
He's got stronger and stronger as
the competition has carried on,
and Sophie, actually, she got
the cannoli spot on.
Who, for you, is in trouble this week?
I think Kate. She was last the
technical.
Yan didn't do very well either and
her cannoli wasn't great.
Actually Yan is in real trouble.
Stacey's hovered in the middle for
quite some time now.
Stacey's problem is that she panics.
She's like the John McEnroe of baking!
She is. You might get a saucepan in
the face, or you might get a hug.
Today's going to be even hotter.
As temperatures rise, they fluster
more, and when you fluster more,
you make mistakes.
Buongiorno, bakers.
Welcome to your second day here in
sunny Italy.
So for your show stopper Italiano,
the judges would like you to make
shell-shaped filled pastries of
campana sfogliatella.
I'm sure you know, sfogliatella
means thin leaf, so once baked,
your delicate multi-layered pastries
should resemble crunchy rustling
leaves. The judges would like you to
make a batch of 24 perfectly flaky
pastries, but the filling is up to you.
You have 4.5 hours.
On your marks... Get
set...
BOTH: Infornare!
50 grams of sugar. I know this
recipe off by heart.
I need to do really well today
otherwise I'm in danger of going home.
Quarterfinal. It's like my absolute
goal.
Sfogliatella - it was developed
about 200 years ago in Italy by a nun.
It's layered, a bit like a filo pastry.
It's akin to a lobster tail.
When you bite into it, it cracks in
your mouth.
Inside has to be the most luscious
filling.
We've asked the bakers to make 12 of
them in one flavour,
12 of them in another favour.
The biggest mistake they could do
with this is not building those
layers correctly.
If they don't, they'll all just fall
to pieces in their hands.
It is so, so delicate.
Even I struggled when I was in Italy
making it myself.
I think this challenge is pure murder.
It's the most complex pastry
challenge ever set on Bake Off.
This is leave it to the professionals...
Or six insane bakers in a hot tent.
Knacker me out. Right, our Sicilian
lemons.
Boiled them for an hour.
The lemons are for Steven's
Sicilian-style marmalade.
The other half will be filled with
chocolate, orange and ginger.
I love the idea of the flavours.
This challenge, what did you think
is the trickiest bit of it?
It's getting that flair of leaves
and I was researching this.
Italian chefs that were making this
were saying, A - don't bother,
or B - it's three days.
4.5 hours is all you've got.
And you have to bother. It is
doable.
It is. It's just very complicated
and it can be extremely...
Don't smile, you picked it!
I've got my dough resting in the
freezer.
So I'm just preparing my filling.
Semolina with some ricotta.
It's basically the thickener for the
sfogliatella. Everybody's doing this
bit.
While the semolina's hot,
I'm going to fold this chocolate so
it combines into it.
So tell us about your sfogliatella.
It's inspired by my trips to Canada.
During the Women's World Cup,
I went to a bakery every day to get
the most delicious lemon,
blueberry scones.
Yan's filling her other half with
maple, pecan, topped with bacon dust.
Maple, bacon, pecan, that's so Canadian.
How come you go to Canada so often?
Because my wife used to work for a
Canadian bank.
They offered her a job over there.
OK. She took redundancy because
we're Londoners.
Londoners through and through.
I've got a maple pecan sfogliatella.
I know Yan's doing maple pecan as
well, but she's added bacon.
To be fair, I have bacon in
the fridge and I was going to do it,
but I was like, "Nah!"
Liam's other filling is orange, rum
and raisin.
And he's found a unique way to
display them.
I've got fake ice.
It looks like lobster tails, right?
So the whole theme is, like, just
caught them from the sea.
My grandad used to deliver all
different types of seafood to different
restaurants and places across the
country.
I love the personal sort of aspect
of it.
I'm just starting to put it through
the machine.
To make just 24 sfogliatella will
take a lengthy 14 metres of pastry.
Is anyone else enjoying this?
Nope. Taxi!
It's very labour intensive.
So much pastry.
If it tears, you just need to start
again.
It's a bit of a beast at the moment.
This can't be right.
Are you OK?
I'm OK. I'll just put these through
again.
So I'm starting to roll my dough now.
This is kind of the important bit.
This is what forms the leaves.
I'm just spreading some lard over it.
That's where you get the flaky,
crunchy thing that you want.
I'm going to stretch it out.
This is going to be one massive sausage.
Show us how you do it. That's only
that wide and I need to get 24 out
of it anyway.
I'm just stretching it out gently
because if you do it too
much, you make a hole.
Why is it not a technical challenge?
Why is it a show stopper? Time.
It takes hours and hours to produce.
It seems like a massive technical
show stopper.
It is, isn't it?
Really hard. Have you seen one
before?
No, my mum and dad went on honeymoon
to the Amalfi Coast and I'm just
going off purely hearsay, what they
say it is.
Kate is filling half with an Italian
style mix of chocolate and hazelnuts,
and the other with a less
traditional lemon and tahini.
Tahini? Tahini.
That's quite savoury, isn't it?
I took a bit of a risk but I decided
to do it just because I like
experimenting with new flavours.
Sophie, though, is keeping it simple.
Mango and passion fruit is a classic
combination.
Her other filling is cherry, almond
and chocolate.
I don't want anything too wacky with
the filling or the flavours.
I just want to think about the
pastry, getting the pastry right.
It looks like a pair of underpants!
Does it? Maybe yours!
Mine don't look like that, Paul!
So tell us about your sfogliatella?
I'm doing two different things.
Citrus and sultanas.
The second one, praline cream.
I've made the praline already.
It's there.
Stacey's giving her praline creme
pats sfogliatella an extra boost by
lining them with choux pastry.
So you're just putting the choux
paste inside?
Yes, and hopefully the choux paste,
the choux part will puff up and I'll
be able to fill it.
The only problem is, as soon as you
put them in the oven,
they've got a mind of their own.
It's a gamble but I'm doing it.
The ones you practised, nine times
out of ten, they came out fine?
The ones I practised, nine times out
of ten, they didn't.
Two hours in. It's boiling hot.
Yes, we're trying to get an Italian
atmosphere for you.
Oh, right!
The temperature has hit 40 degrees.
Oh, it is boiling!
And rising heat...
It's sticky, which I would prefer
that it wasn't.
...makes rolling wafer thin pastry
easier said than done.
In this heat, the last thing you
want is anything that's going to
melt. Oh, the butter's melting.
It's just ruining my pastry, this heat.
I think it's beyond repair now.
How's it going? It's splitting and
it's hot.
Look at her, she's like a machine
over there.
I could just walk around like that
for you.
When I was at school, I always had,
"Stacey has the potential to do
really well.
"However, she doesn't concentrate."
When I don't concentrate, things go
wrong and unfortunately,
I can use about that much. I just
don't have enough dough.
Bakers, you've got one hour remaining.
Cut it into 24 pieces.
It's the moment of truth.
Time to see if their rolling has
been a success.
I'm just about to start the shaping
of my sfogliatella.
It's supposed to resemble a lobster
tail or wheel of lamination.
Lamination is baker talk for
multiple layers.
Can you see all those layers?
No lamination...
These are no good.
These are going to be ugliatelle!
...may mean going home.
Well, they look like lobster tails.
What? What sort of lobster have you
seen?
I've got a pet lobster and his tail
is exactly like that.
Please don't look at them.
They're fine! There's nothing to see
here!
This is the choux pastry one, which
is so tiny.
I'm sure someone said they wanted
them to be really small,
and very uneven in size.
Yeah, mine aren't even. Don't even
talk about yours!
God, they're looking stunning, Sophie.
Thanks, mate! Just 23 more of them
to do!
I'm going to present 24
sfogliatella, whether it..
It might well kill me.
They never said I had to be alive to
take the judgment.
If you die, I will step in for you.
Thank you, avenge my death.
Anything I can do to help?
To be honest with you, you're the
least of my problems!
This is hot.
I'm sitting on an ice bath just to
stop it literally melting in front
of me.
God, look at this state of them.
They're just absolutely melting.
It's just hell.
They're just melting.
It's just not right.
God, Almighty!
Oh, God, that will just be a
makeshift one.
Oh, he has to come when it's the one
that's flopped.
Look at my other ones in the fridge!
Please?
Such a wind-up merchant.
Oh!
Bakers, you have 30 minutes.
Trenta minuti.
I'm so far behind.
The dough isn't behaving itself.
I'm just going to stick these in the
freezer for a sec because they're
melting.
Not worth the calories.
You don't want to get that from free.
Anyone for a canape?
Can you imagine if you got that in
the shop?
You'd be like, "How much? I'm not
paying for that!"
Let's just get this pain over and
done with, shall we?
I'm going to put these in for 15, 20
minutes.
As the fat cooks, it will just push
the layers apart.
Come on, little babies, laminate.
It's all about when it goes in the
oven and how it looks.
You just don't know.
Time? Not doing great,
because I've got 16 minutes to put
them in the oven for half an hour.
I think the reality of the situation
is mine are pretty terrible.
And they're going in. Oh, no
lamination.
I'm going to get screwed over.
No lamination? No lamination.
Oh, man. I don't think no lamination
is the end of the world.
You know, I'm not laminated and I'm
having a great time!
When I look at it, they freak me out.
You have ten minutes.
Dieci minuti.
Have you got enough time to bake
them? God, no!
On the hottest day of the year, he
puts gloves on!
It's a very stressful gig, this.
That is it.
Crapalatelle!
My choux puffed too much because the
whole thing has gone...
It's very depressing.
Look at the state of them. What do
you want, bigger?
Bigger gaps? Bigger. Everybody wants
bigger, don't they?
Different colour? Just everything
but what they are.
The filling does taste great. I
haven't got it in yet. Let's
just see if I can get it in without
it all spilling out.
Absolutely ludicrous.
It's melting.
Come on.
Come on. At least yours are cooked!
The pastry cream is leaking out
everywhere.
Shooting out of every orifice.
That is weather related. And that's
a bit of a problem for me because
the only reason why I did the
choux pastry in the first place was
to put the lovely creme pat inside,
so it's gone from disaster to
disaster to disaster.
Three, two, one, now.
Bakers, you've got one minute left.
Maybe drop them? I can see her over
there, cool as ice.
If all else fails, put on some icing
sugar!
Five... Four...
Three... Two...
One...
It's very upsetting.
Bakers, that is the end of your show
stopper challenge.
The last Italian challenge.
We can all have a nice espresso martini.
Out you go from this unbelievably
hot tent.
It's definitely the heat. It's not
my fault!
It's judgment time for the bakers.
Pfft!
Liam, would you like to bring up
your sfogliatelle?
Liam, I think that presentation is
just fantastic.
Lobster tails on ice.
It's just amazing to look at.
They're inconsistent in size, but I
think you've got great lamination.
I think the layers are fantastic.
Maple and pecan, delicious.
What have you got inside this?
Rum-soaked raisins, orange zest.
The orange comes through in that
one, actually.
Flavour's lovely.
I know that took hours,
and it's a hell of an achievement.
Steven, please bring up
your sfogliatelle.
Proper showstopper.
Lobster tail, excellent lamination.
Style. Come on, substance!
Style box is ticked...
...and substance.
Yes!
The chocolate, that little bit of
heat that comes from the ginger is
delicious. Sicilian lemon tastes
really Italian.
It goes rather flaky in your mouth
because the pastry is so perfect.
What you've done is sfogliatelle
which are authentic.
I think you could sell them
in any pastry shop in Italy.
Well done. Thank you.
Great lamination.
You've got that classic lobster tail
running all the way through.
The time that you've spent on it,
you can see the intricacy.
So this is the cherry? Yeah.
Mmm. It's got a nice bitterness
to it which I think works inside.
I think that's like crisp leaves,
chewing it,
you get the passion fruit and mango.
It is quite a showstopper.
I must say I'm a bit disappointed,
not only in the way that they look,
the sfogliatelle,
but also because this was supposed
to be showstopper presentation,
and it doesn't look
as if you're proud of them.
Lamination, there's big problems
with that.
These look as though they've been
sat on.
Hazelnut chocolate. Certainly got
the hazelnut.
Tahini and lemon.
Actually it's quite pleasant.
If you close your eyes and eat it
you think, that's great.
But then you open your eyes and see
it and go, "Ah."
You're not getting much lamination.
Oh!
Maple and bacon, it's extremely
Canadian.
The flavour's lovely, but
the consistency is quite doughy.
The creme pat and the blueberry,
these ones are quite raw.
You're obviously disappointed,
and in a way we're a bit
disappointed, too.
Bit of a mess. Total mess.
Stacey, please bring up
your sfogliatelle.
Um...
Sfoglia... Sfogliatini, so
they're for the kids. Oh, I see.
The lamination is very poor
and there's too much icing sugar
on there, which is unusual for you,
normally you smash something like
this and it looks good.
It's the heat, I think.
Citrus and raisin.
I like that filling.
I think it's the right degree
of sweetness.
It's very runny for a creme pat.
You were so ambitious to do a choux
paste middle.
Your nightmare's come true,
the choux bun's burst out and, on
the top there, you have raw dough.
I appreciate the fact
that it's extremely difficult to do,
but everyone was in the same boat,
and we have to judge accordingly.
I agree. This one, I think you've
let yourself down a little bit.
I think it was close to, in old
money, 100 degrees in the tent.
Have either of you ever worked
anywhere that was hotter?
I worked in Hong Kong in July, in
an un-air-conditioned hotel kitchen.
I can better that.
THEY LAUGH
When I was working in the bakery
and the temperature was 50 degrees,
all I had on was shorts.
When I was a fire juggler, I lived
on the edge of the volcano...
THEY LAUGH
...but I got on with it.
So getting to this, Sophie and
Steven both in a very good place,
is that still the case? Yes,
that's certainly the case.
Both Steven and Sophie are very
skilful with their fingers.
Liam's was a little bit tardy
on the overall size differences
but the lamination he
managed to get, very clever.
So Liam, Sophie and Steven for Star
Baker, and who's in the danger zone?
PRUE: Yan struggled
and she knew that.
I mean, she didn't
achieve any lamination.
They were undercooked.
I mean there was a whole heap
of things wrong with Yan's.
Yan's struggled,
hasn't she, all weekend?
She has. I think Yan's
had a terrible week.
I think Kate's there as well.
It did look hideous.
SANDI: What about Stacey?
Not worth the calories.
My ultimate test.
Fantastically well done to everybody.
I have never seen anybody have to do
such a tremendously difficult
challenge in this astonishing heat!
It was really, really tough.
It is my pleasure to announce
this week's Star Baker.
The Star Baker is the person who
brought the flavours of Italy
absolutely bursting into
our mouths with the cannoli
and whose sfogliatella was
a laminate perfection.
The Star Baker is Steven.
APPLAUSE
Obviously that means
I've got the horrible job
of announcing the baker
who's leaving us.
The person who's leaving
us this week is...
Oh, my God.
...Yan. I'm sorry. It's OK.
We'll always have Basil.
I'm so sorry.
That's OK. Don't be sorry.
I thought it was me. I know you did,
I could see it on your face.
It was close!
You did really well.
Thank you. I'm amazed
how far I've come.
It's been a difficult, tough...
An amazing experience.
It's been...
...the best.
I'm so sorry.
I'm not sorry, it's OK.
I've had a wonderful adventure.
Have you had a good time?
A totally wonderful adventure.
Thank you so much. Poor Yan.
I mean, everybody loves Yan and I'm
as sorry as anybody to see her go.
Come here. I love you.
Come here. It's OK, don't worry.
I'm still in shock.
I'm super excited but
I'm super upset for Yan.
Absolutely gobsmacked.
Gobsmacked.
When they said "Yan" I
nearly fainted off my chair.
I'm just so shocked, I'm so sorry,
I'm shocked to my core.
No, no, no, but I'm not. Well done.
Thank you. Steven's back!
He had style and substance.
I'm floating on that cloud again.
I've gone all this way.
It's mad, mad.
Mad, mad, mad, mad.
So good.
I feel proud but more shocked, I think!
I'm a quarterfinalist in
The Great British Bake Off.
It's brilliant. Next week...
Who has ever heard of this before?
...the tent goes back in
time with forgotten bakes.
Maybe you know what you're doing?
Come on now! A signature
that's sweet AND savoury...
Nice clanger. Sounds delicious.
...a technical tart
full of bygone booze...
No more rum. Whoo!
...and in a feat of
Victorian engineering...
Go big or go home.
...the most elaborate
sponge Showstopper...
Cake's in. Macaroons.
...the bakers have ever faced.
Easy!