Another Bake Off debut as the warm, friendly embrace of a little Scandinavian welcomes us to the tent’s first Danish Week. Some bakers seem a little unsure at what’s in store. Rahul asks ‘are crawshaws Danish?’ Crawshaws? ‘Crawshaws,’ Rahul repeats. Oh, croissants! No. Paul announces this is the ‘quarter finals now – any problems, I’ll be on them’. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t waited until week eight to be critical.
For their Signature Challenge, the bakers must bake a rye bread, then cut off two slices to produce a pair of perfect open sandwiches called smørrebrød. Prue says she’s looking for ‘beauty combined with simplicity – a little piece of art on a small piece of very thin rye bread’.
Briony is making two contrasting doughs to marble into one loaf and she’s planning to craft little gardens on her bread slices – a Spanish-inspired Iberico ham and chorizo and a West Country one with flaked mackerel. Kim-Joy has typically taken Prue’s demands for ‘art’ to heart; producing a pickled cucumber and radish fish on smoked salmon, and egg and nori bumblebees on Havarti cheese flowers.
The judges’ eyes glaze over as they begin to wish they’d never asked Rahul to tell them about his smørrebrød – ‘one with smoked salmon… I’m going to serve it with a remoulade… basically carrot, celeriac and shallots, chopped up really nicely and reduced down… little bit of curry powder with mayonnaise and then I’m going to pickle some cucumber as well, with lemon, a few asparagus spears and some dill leaves, make some homemade cheese, pickle some candy beetroot, golden beetroot and normal beetroot and just arrange it on the top’. Noel tells him ‘times up now you’ve explained all that’ but Rahul is oblivious to the joke.
Manon is channelling classic cheeseboard combinations of fruit and nuts. Her creamy gorgonzola, pear and walnut sandwich is paired with a goat’s cheese, beetroot and strawberry one.
Sandi tells Ruby her father Claus Toksvig has a sandwich named after him. Ruby is unwilling to give the same honour to Paul, preferring instead to celebrate post-gym sustenance with her Mediterranean breakfast of avocado, asparagus, eggs and chorizo and a Tandoori chicken lunch.