We're always talking about consistency. It's one of the biggest factors in our rankings because a single failed bake can send a contestant home. Often the baker that leaves isn't the worst baker, she's just the baker who had the worst week. Were we wrong about Sura? Everything we'd seen in the weeks prior made us believe Sura was one of the most consistent bakers. We've seen small issues with timing and decoration. We flagged clumsiness as a risk in our week 1 rankings and her dropping half her signature did get her into trouble, but ultimately, her fate was decided by a single white chocolate catastrophe. We stand by our prior rankings. Sura is a talented and inventive baker. Everyone has that one thing they struggle with. Anyone can get unlucky. You're still finalist material in our book, Sura. ❤️ S&A Ranking the remaining bakers was especially tough this week. The judges hated everyone's brownies and the bakers struggled to wrangle their white chocolate in the heat. We've added the 🤤award to track 'Pruegasms', with Hermine as the first recipient. Here's who we think is most likely to survive to the finals from here. ⭐️ Star baker | 🥇 Tech first | 🥈 Tech second | 🥉 Tech third | 🤝 Hollywood Handshake | 🤤 Pruegasm
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Bread making requires a feel for the dough and judgment gained through experience. You can't follow a recipe blindly. You have to know how added ingredients affect the moisture, weight, and density of the dough, its rise and its bake. Unlike cakes, biscuits, or patisserie, there are fewer ways to decorate & embellish bread once its out of the oven. It's also Paul's specialty, and his favorite week of GBBO, so the stakes are high. This was a tough week for many, leaving Paul a little unimpressed and some bakers much lower in the rankings. ❤️ S&A ⭐️ Star baker awards | 🥇 Technical firsts | 🥈 Technical seconds | 🥉 Technical thirds | 🤝 Hollywood Handshakes
This was a week where it felt like many bakers should move up the rankings because they did so much better than week 1. But when everyone is getting better, it's not enough to just better yourself. The bakers must keep improving over the course of the season to stay competitive. It's one of the best parts of this show. The macaroon technical was challenging, but didn't stretch the field as much as some others have in the past. All the bakers executed well enough that a few extra minutes of bake time translated into huge differences in rank order. Maybe the close spread contributed to the decision to dismiss the third place finisher over the last place finisher this week. We all disliked the overly obscure recipes from earlier seasons, but when everyone's bake is so similar the judges seem to discount the weight of the technical placement- Mak's dismissal felt a little unjust. Choosing a good technical requires as much deliberation and precision from the judges as executing it does for the bakers. Overall, the field looks much stronger after the second episode. Some bakers have settled into their rankings and others have surprised us. Here's what we see two weeks in. ❤️ S&A ⭐️ Star baker awards | 🥇 Technical firsts | 🥈 Technical seconds | 🥉 Technical thirds | 🤝 Hollywood Handshakes
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Week 1 rankings are about snap judgements- extrapolating as much about our bakers as possible from brief, introductory glimpses. Early in the season, each episode's screen time is split among more contestants. We barely get a few words from the judges on each baking contest. While there is publicly available information on the contestants and research is possible outside the show, the prior winners include gym teachers, physicists, lawyers, and stuntwomen. The belief that anyone can ultimately emerge as the best baker is at the heart of this contest. Indexing off anything other than what we see in the episode feels not only speculative, but antithetical to GBBO's core ethos. Besides, anyone that's followed this series knows this contest is as much about the character, strategy and determination the characters bring to the tent as it is about their beginning experience and skill level. Eagerness to grow and adapt will change our baker's fortunes over the season. So with relatively little to go off, we continued our long-running, couch-cushion tradition of predicting each contestants' chances of making the final. After ten seasons of watching bakers rise and fall, we independently arrived at remarkably similar results. In a year when so many of the richest parts of life are unavailable, we've decided to publish our weekly GBBO power rankings for anyone else that cherishes this show as much as we do. Please chalk any coarseness in commentary, questionable spellings or choice of format up to me being an American, an NFL fan, and a GBBO Fantasy League contestant. ❤️ S&A ⭐️ Star baker awards | 🥇 Technical first place | 🥈 Technical second place | 🥉 Technical third place
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AuthorSJust two longtime fans with no baking credentials to speak of, happy to have GBBO back to help get us through COVID. |