The Great British Bake Off 2016 episode five recap: The action hotted up in pastry week

Bake Off is proving its star quality at the halfway mark. This week, pastry got the tent in a sweat

Candice rolling her pastry on a pasta machine (BBC/Love Productions/Tom Graham)

If anyone was ever in doubt that the morning Danish might be bad for you, pastry week confirmed it. There is a lot of butter involved in “laminating” dough, the technique used to get those yummy, flaky layers. To save money, you may as well just snack on a bar of Anchor and be done with it. Pastry is, as the three tasks showed, very fiddly too. “One down, a million processes to go,” said Selasi as he rolled out just one of his doughs for the signature. Still, all the precision required made for an action-packed episode, in the way that on Bake Off, watching crimson-faced contestants furiously piping frangipane into a tart case against the clock, is on par with a Bond film car chase.

They were tasked with making 24 Danishes in the signature (two types, 12 of each kind). The technical was the kind of pud that purists upset by batter week would have been happy to see: a Bakewell tart. Lastly, the showstopper involved 48 filo pastry amuse-bouche; 24 sweet, 24 savoury. Paul confirmed size did matter in this case - a square inch-and-a-half is the optimum dimension for a pre-dinner apetiser, apparently.


 Even the king of cool Selasi felt the pressure 
 (BBC/Love)

Bakeastrophes

Both Tom and Benjamina (last week’s winner) served up raw Danishes as the curse of the star baker struck again in the signature. “Your pastry needs a lot of werrrrk,” said Paul to poor Benji. Dear Andrew – who incidentally has an amazing repertoire of facial expressions – didn’t turn his oven on in the technical, wasting 15 precious minutes. Despite making a Bakewell tart every week for her family, Val’s thick pastry gave Mary and Paul the chance to trap out one of the most oft-used clichés around the show: the soggy bottom. In the showstopper, Tom’s amuse-bouche were deemed “informal” by Mary (my now go-to adjective for anything a bit messy) and Val’s filo pastry on her Christmassy mincemeat parcels was declared more like shortcrust. The shame.

Val working on her Bakewell in the technical. Shame about the soggy bottom (BBC/Love)

Baking Bonanzas

Jane wowed Mary with her filling distribution in the signature. It’s the little things, evidently. Jane and Candice managed to bake well in the technical and Benjamina won-over the judges with plantain in her showstopper, a recipe inspired by her Nigerian heritage. “That just the sort of surprise I like before a meal,” said Mary of Rav’s Chinese-style prawn amuse-bouche. And I’m sure I’m not the only one whose mouth was watering at the thought of Candice’s sausage, black pudding and apple rounds.

The show really comes into its own at this stage in the competition as we’re now starting to see the contestants as old friends and anticipate their quirks and signature methods. Whether that’s Andrew applying precision engineering to his bakes, or Val praying in front of her oven and having a tongue-in-cheek comeback to any of the judges’ criticisms (her use of dental floss this week to cut pastry was an unexpected highlight, too).

Engineering in action: Andrew working on his precise book folds. (BBC/Love)

Every family has its eccentricities and the show is like being a fly on the wall in the kitchen of a Sunday morning, when everyone is at their most "informal". The little revelations help to endear the contestants to us. My favourite one this week was that Andrew spent his childhood car journeys snacking on dates that his dad stashed in the glove box. Why not those fruity boiled sweets that came in a tin full of powder that did for the rest of us?

I keep coming back to this, but the editing is warm and positive with contestants seeming genuinely happy when their competitors ace it. “Star baker” whispered Jane as the judges were in raptures over Candice’s piggy amuse-bouche. And I doff my chef's hat to producers for managing to make us feel as if we're going along for the ride, rather than having our emotions manipulated. Candice welled up over her nan’s memory during the technical. You sensed that she had been carrying that photo of her grandma around all series, rather than just wheeling it out for the cameras as they might on, say, one of Simon Cowell’s Saturday night talent shows.

Jane gave star baker Candice a run for her money (BBC/Love)

Jane’s prediction proved to be right: brilliant Candice was declared star baker and Val’s excuses had run out. Her family might like their bottoms soggy but Mary and Paul did not.

There was nothing inauthentic about my tears as she left the tent: “When you bake, you make it with love. Whenever I make anything, I stir love into it, I knead love into it, so when I present it, it’s special.” Eat your heart out, X-Factor.

Val will be a much-missed presence in the tent (BBC/Love)

Paul’s putdown of the week: “Dry as a bone, and with granola on top – wow.” On Tom’s not-so-buttery Danishes.

Candice lipstick watch: A rich dark purple, befitting of a star baker.

Wordplay of the week: “I don’t want to put you in a frangipanic, but you’ve only got an hour left.” A belter from Sue.

Baking word of the week: Book turn – a method used for laminating dough to ensure enough layers. It was employed by resident engineer Andrew this week on his breakfast pastries.