By Lucy Mangan TheGuardian
The joy of the original show is becoming invested in ordinary humans excelling themselves. Watching chefs getting it wrong is just frustrating
It remains a strange thing to have done: to have taken The Great British Bake Off, a show that lives and dies by its showcasing of amateur skills and the invitation to lose yourself in a nostalgic daydream of fluffy buttercream, and stripped it of every ounce of that to produce a spinoff. But there you go and here we are – the fourth series of Bake Off: The Professionals (Channel 4).
Twelve teams bake six at a time over two days, overseen by the presenters Liam Charles (a hugely charming contestant on proper Bake Off in 2017) and Tom Allen (who has his own experience of talent competitions, having won the comedy contest So You Think You’re Funny? in 2005). They are judged by Cherish Finden (the award-winning executive pastry chef at the Langham hotel in London) and Benoit Blin (the chef patissier at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons et Frenchest Frenchman that ever did live). They are a slightly effortful, slightly exhausting quartet, although Blin’s unmediated expressions of disappointment are always worth the price of admission. “Texture-wise,” he says dolefully at one stage, munching on a sub-par showpiece, “I am not ’having fun.”
The first challenge is to bake 24 identical miniature Linzer tortes. It does not go well. I imagine these to be little chocolate German tanks, possibly with working turrets – they call themselves professionals, after all – but, of course, they are not (for one thing, they are Austrian, named after the city of Linz). However, considering the trouble most teams have, I wonder if it would be any trickier to give my idea a go. A lot of latticework is all I am saying. Only Nelson and Evaldas, from the South Place hotel in London, really kick its arse. They make a lattice you could train roses up, freeze it, then cut rounds out of it while the others fiddle about with crumbling strips of dough. It is marvelous.
At the same time, everyone has to make 24 identical miniatures of a “Bakewell tart with a twist”. The kitchen becomes a maelstrom of chantilly cream, crémeux, raspberry glazes, macaron towers, nougatine rings, and sweating chefs. Reshmi and Daisy, of Anges de Sucre cakemakers in London, have a bad time of it. Their giant cherry mousses simply will not set. And, as we all know, if your giant cherry mousses will not set, you cannot turn them out of their silicone molds and you certainly cannot glaze them to perfection. “I don’t enjoy eating it at all,” says Cherish at judging time. Daisy is tearful because she fears she has let Reshmi down. “Ees okay,” says Blin, with a bracing charm possibly only he can pull off. “Take two minutes. Yes, a competition. Everyone ’ has one bad day. Allez!” They do allez, and make a much better fist of things the next day, which is showpiece day.
The instructions boil down to: “Do something bloody clever with a red velvet cake.” But nobody does. Compared with the glories created on proper Bake Off, these are nothing to write home about. I am aware that I say this as someone about to unwrap a Colin the Caterpillar cake for her son’s eighth birthday – just as she has done for the seven birthdays before that – but I am not holding myself up as one of the top 12 pastry chefs in the country.
Mousses are grainy, chocolate grandfather clocks have holes in them and a Red Riding Hood theme features a wolf made from a mold, whereas Kim-Joy from last year’s amateur version would have whittled it herself with a unicorn horn from a vision that came to her in a dream.
Proper Bake Off brings out the best not just in its contestants, who are in an environment that supports them in reaching their full potential (even though the tent is perennially TOO HOT and introduces an unwarrantable element of chance into the process, which should be eliminated forthwith, and yes this is a hill I will die on). But it also brings out the best in its viewers, who are similarly invested in seeing what giddy heights ordinary humans can reach. Watching professionals get it wrong brings out your worst self. You get frustrated at best, schadenfreude (even if that is not a word) at worst. Bake Off: The Professionals becomes a cold, slightly embittering experience, at odds with baking itself and with its parent programme.
The preview episode I watched didn’t show who won, but – in a more savage indictment than even Cherish’s “I cannot tell I’m eating red velvet cake” to Nelson and Evaldas – I didn’t care. Allez, people. Allez.
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