Netflix‘s The Great British Baking Show has been mixing up this season’s Technical Challenges, to varying results. So far, Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith both have asked the bakers to figure out the flavor of the fondant fancies they’re baking through taste alone and asked them to recreate “School Cake” without any recipe whatsoever. However, Paul Hollywood’s latest twist might be the best yet.
Taking a note from Bravo’s Top Chef, The Great British Baking Show introduced the “Gingham Pantry” during “Chocolate Week.” Letting the bakers choose their own flavors for their Technical Challenge this week not only allowed them greater creativity, but it also unlocked a new Noel Fielding character…
**Spoilers for The Great British Baking Show, “Chocolate Week,” now streaming on Netflix**
The Great British Baking Show “Chocolate Week” is usually considered one of the trickiest weeks for the bakers in the tent. That’s usually because startlingly high summer temperatures make it next to impossible for chocolate to set correctly. However, this year, the weather behaved, but Paul Hollywood brought the proverbial thunder by introducing the Gingham Pantry.
Most Great British Baking Show Technical Challenges follow the same pattern. Paul or Prue tease the bakers with some ominous clue about the challenge before leaving the tent. Then, the two of them enjoy a cuppa and delve into all the ways the bakers might mess up whatever complex patisserie fare they’ve asked them to bake. Meanwhile, the bakers have lifted gingham fabric over their benches to discover a very scant recipe and a collection of ingredients they need to include. Then the bakers panic, bake, and get judged on what they’ve made.
This week, the challenge was different. Paul asked for a white chocolate tart, but left them no recipe. More importantly, though, he also left a mysterious table full of ingredients called the “Gingham Pantry.” As Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding explained, the bakers’ finished tarts needed a shortcrust pastry crust and white chocolate ganache filling, but everything else was up to them. They could choose additional flavors from the wide variety of fresh ingredients in the Gingham Pantry. The one twist? The bakers had to use every ingredient they selected from the Gingham Pantry in their bake.
I, for one, loved the idea of the Gingham Pantry. It not only forced the bakers to show off their technical know how — as Prue said, every one of them should have a shortcrust pastry and a ganache recipe in their back pocket — but it also let them express their creativity. Instead of a bunch of bakers blindly trying to copy Paul and Prue’s style, they got to show off how they’d tackle a brief. The Gingham Pantry is a win-win, in my opinion.
The Gingham Pantry didn’t just push the bakers to be creative, though; it unleashed a force from deep within Noel Fielding. From the jump, Noel began affecting the voice of a fairy tale character impishly taunting the bakers on behalf of the Gingham Pantry. “Behold! The Gingham Pantry!” he said.
“Use what you choose!” Fielding crooned, as he stalked the outer edges of the tent. “For if you choose and don’t use, this will be… a terrible time for thee!”
Now, I’m sure not everyone loved the Gingham Pantry. Nadia struggled the most throughout the challenge, eye-balling measurements and producing a poor crust. She eventually went home. However, it was fun to see how each baker adjusted their plans or chose to decorate their own tart. When Paul and Prue came in to judge the bakers, instead of a table full of awkward imitations of bakes the contestants had never seen, we got eight different, (mostly) neat and tidy tarts.
More and more often, the Technical Challenges have felt like pure torture for the bakers. They’ve been increasingly sadistic trials to test how many cookbooks these sweet souls have memorized. The Gingham Pantry tests the bakers’ core knowledge while also encouraging them to show off the creative spirit that drives them to bake.
The Gingham Pantry should be a new tradition on The Great British Baking Show.