The Great British Bake Off 2025: bread week recap
It's week three of the sixteenth series of Great British Bake Off! Howard Middleton takes us through everything that happened in this year's bread week.
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The Great British Bake Off 2025Bread week, like Fight Club, has its rules. Unlike Fight Club, there are more than eight and all can be talked about. Paul, the undisputed heavy-wheat champion, rocks up in black. It’s a serious choice; always flattering to a little overindulgence, but with an appropriate air of menace. Incidentally, it’s also impractical for even the lightest dusting of flour, which tells us he’s not about to repeat last year’s technical demonstration.
Rule number one is the obvious one – you must try to please Paul. Aaron immediately gets off to a bad start, as his take on the signature challenge of a savoury monkey bread includes Marmite in the dough. Paul’s face says it all. Picky eating habits did not end with his teenage years, as clearly evidenced by the infamous gherkin incident of series eleven. ‘Underproved’ and ‘underbaked,’ he asserts, but it’s surprisingly Prue who delivers the harshest critique. ‘It has a good flavour, but the texture’s so awful you couldn’t eat it,’ she declares.
‘I’m a little more enthusiastic,’ she tells Toby, after his porcini, pesto and Parmesan bread gets a lukewarm reception from Paul. He’s similarly underwhelmed by Pui Man’s red bean curd and Asian pesto loaf, though her inclusion of morning glory gives him the opportunity for a ‘limp’ quip.
‘It looks a bit rough and ready,’ is his assessment of Nadia’s Calabrian-inspired combo of nduja cream, sun-dried tomato, black olive and wild garlic, but he concedes ‘I can’t argue with the flavours.’ However, this agreeable mood is short lived. ‘Have you ever tried olive and coriander?’ he asks Jasmine, when she reveals she’s pairing her Kalamatas with rosemary instead. Initially masquerading as an innocent suggestion, by judging time it’s morphed into a hard and fast rule. ‘I would always have coriander with an olive,’ he contends. Prue’s ideal partnership for this unexpectedly controversial bread sounds far more convivial. ‘With friends and a glass of wine… perfect,’ she smiles.
Cheese is a popular choice. Iain’s ‘Irish cheeseboard’ includes a trio of varieties, along with fruity bursts of pear, apple and blackberry. ‘Superb’ with a ‘nice strong colour’ says the perma-tanned judge. He also loves the flavours of Jessika’s blue cheese, caramelised onion, fig and walnut bread, but despite a last-minute addition of an extra forty grams of Stilton to her pear and walnut loaf, Lesley still doesn’t tip the scales in her favour. ‘You needed more Stilton,’ Paul insists.
Natalia’s enriched dough turns out to be surprisingly ‘sweet,’ which detracts from her savoury flavours of cheese, onion and bacon. Despite being ‘a little doughy,’ Prue discovers ‘the bit towards the edge is absolute perfection.’ However, vying once again for the crown of ‘flavour king,’ Tom packs his bake with concentrated bistro classics of steak and peppercorn, French onion soup and croque monsieur. ‘Delicious,’ exclaims Prue, and Paul agrees he’s onto a winner with flavours that are both ‘strong’ and ‘punchy.’
The bakers are back ‘in the ring’ for the technical challenge of twelve glazed doughnuts, six of which demand an extra coating of strawberry-flavoured icing and a finishing touch of what the recipe describes as ‘red and white spiralling circles.’
With her confidence spiralling ever downwards, Pui Man sighs, ‘I just hope I’m not at the bottom again.’ Alison points out that her position at the back of the tent gives her the advantage of seeing what everyone else is doing. ‘I don’t cheat,’ insists the principled baker, revealing that she never cheated at school either. ‘Did you do well at school?’ asks Alison. ‘No,’ she replies.
And poor Pui Man fails to prosper again, coming last as she feared. Toby misses out on a technical hat trick and is knocked down to a respectable fourth. ‘Someone’s trying to be clever,’ declares Paul, snootily surveying Jasmine’s interpretation of the ambiguous decoration brief. However, he and Prue concede she’s pretty much achieved perfection.
Now, the bakers need more than a quick sugar fix for the five-hour marathon that is this week’s showstopper. At least three tiers of enriched dough must be stacked into a sweet celebratory centrepiece, ideally with personal significance.
Aaron goes all out with a heartfelt tribute to two late friends, filling four couronnes with apricot, cherry and pistachio marzipan, then abundantly strewing them with fondant flowers. ‘Absolutely astonishing,’ exclaims Prue, adding that it’s ‘pretty faultless.’
Heavily hinting it’s high time her boyfriend ‘put a ring on it,’ Nadia piles on the pressure with a stunning wedding cake of French brioche, filled with raspberry crème pâtissière and decorated with buttercream flowers. Paul and Prue agree it’s perfectly ‘lovely.’
Baked bridal bouquets are also presented by Lesley and Nataliia, as they go head-to-head in a battle for the best korovai. Lesley’s rum-soaked raisin and orange version is deemed to be well baked by Prue and ‘a good job’ by Paul, but Nataliia, having played the trump card of an authentic Ukrainian grandmother’s recipe, is surprisingly judged to be less successful. ‘Your spice levels are good, but the dough itself is very claggy,’ says Paul, and Prue thinks the decoration is ‘a little bit clumsy.’
Jessika suffers the same ‘clumsy’ criticism for her pumpkin-shaped bake, whilst Paul feels the only flavour is coming from the fillings of apricot jam and crème pâtissière. And Iain gets another ‘claggy’ for his Samhain celebration, flavoured with apple, cinnamon and caramel. ‘You just cannot put apple in a bake like this,’ decrees Paul, and yet another rule is added to the list.
With one of the cleverest names of the series so far, Toby’s ‘The Bread that Stolle Christmas’ is praised by Prue as ‘the best tasting stollen I’ve ever had.’ However, she and Paul agree that bake-wise, it’s ‘not quite done.’
Dedicated to his boyfriend’s love of autumn, Tom’s tower of cinnamon buns features cream cheese frosting and a flurry of edible leaves, all topped off with a chocolate tree. Prue says it’s both ‘dramatic’ and ‘neatly done’ and it looks like Tom could well be retaining his Star Baker title when Paul declares, ‘I love it,’ adding ‘the bread’s really light and the fillings pack a punch.’
However, it’s Jasmine who delivers a knockout blow with her plaited cinnamon and cardamom Midsommer crowns, which Paul admiringly decides are ‘baked beautifully.’ With its simple but intricate trail of white icing wildflowers, Prue adds that it ‘looks incredibly pretty and it tastes fantastic.’
Which leaves Pui Man and her coconut and cherry wedding cake, decorated with bread dough roses. Paul cuts a slice to reveal what looks like a featherlight panettone-like texture. ‘You’ve managed to achieve something that has surprised me,’ he says, and it’s even more shocking when Pui Man discovers her time is the tent is over.
Meanwhile, Jasmine temporarily removes her Star Baker crown to take a well-earned break. Paul has kindly provided a little light reading – ‘The Big Book of Bread Week Rules.’ ‘Rule number forty six,’ she reads, ‘olives must always be paired with coriander.’
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