Take away the image of the icing and replace it with detailed instructions-two tablespoons of orange juice stirred into 200 grams of sugar to make a stiff but pourable icing-and she will get there just as reliably, even if she can’t be sure at the end that the icing looks exactly like it’s supposed to. Give a good cook a whole orange and a bag of confectioner’s sugar and an image of an iced bun and tell her to make icing, and she will have enough information to whip together the desired icing, by adding a little orange juice to a little sugar, stirring, tasting, adding, and so forth. It’s fascinating and sometimes infuriating to encounter this gap mid-challenge. Technical challenges, it turns out, teach you about the huge and often insurmountable gap between understanding a thing and knowing a thing. The technical challenges don’t sort the good bakers from the bad. When they screw up, or when they get caught staring slack-jawed at a particularly obscured step of the instructions, it’s never because they are bad at baking, or because they have failed to prepare for or to take seriously the challenge ahead. It’s no wonder that some of these bakers occasionally wind up sobbing before the challenge is over.Īll of the contestants are very good bakers. To make matters worse, the contestants are given no opportunity to study the method, stripped-down though it may be, before the clock starts ticking. The show’s judges then make a determined effort to strip the instructions of all helpful information, and then the contestants are given a strict and punishing time limit. Each technical challenge showcases a bake that would be considered tricky under any circumstances. The challenges are specifically formulated to push to the limit contestants who are credibly described as the best amateur bakers in the United Kingdom. The technical challenges of The Great British Bake Off are meant to be difficult, and not just for bloggers of questionable baking expertise. Welcome to a new series called The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off, where Kelsey and Chris attempt to complete the technical challenges from the newest season of The Great British Bake Off in their own home kitchens, with the same time parameters as the professional-grade bakers competing on the show.
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