The Great British Baking Show is currently airing one of its nicest, least problematic seasons ever—which is saying a lot, given what happened last year—but fans still have one big gripe after this week’s episode. There’s an easy fix to the complaint, but it would be a major help to the bakers: For the love of Paul Hollywood, give the contestants more time to complete the technical challenges.
It was Paul’s week to assign the technical bake during Dessert Week. Paul can’t make anything easy: He asked the bakers to make six perfect orange and ginger treacle puddings in just an hour. Okay, sure. Let’s just follow his recipe, which tells us that the puddings need 40 minutes in the oven—meaning the bakers had only 20 minutes to complete the other intricate elements required to make these delights.
When it was time for judging from Paul and Prue Leith, none of the bakers were confident with the bakes they had delivered to the tent’s front table. Almost all of the puddings had—say it with me now—soggy bottoms. The GBBS official X (formerly Twitter) account even admitted this was perhaps the “most disastrous challenge in Bake Off history.” Yikes.
