The Great British Baking Show Season 14 Episode 5 Recap: Pastry Week

It’s the week where the phrase “soggy bottom” enters your vocabulary of the judges. The Great British Baking Show Season 14 Episode 5, “Pastry Week,” sees the bakers make pies of all types.

After a disastrous showing on The Great British Baking Show Season 14 Episode 4, “Chocolate Week,” many bakers are feeling the pressure. It isn’t helped the knowledge that two of them are going to be up for elimination since no one went home this week. 

Signature Challenge: Savory Picnic Pies

For this week’s signature, the judges are looking for the bakers to make 12 individual savory picnic pies. The flavors and fillings are up to the bakers, but they are required to use hot water crust pastry.

Early on in this challenge it’s clear that the theme of this week is going to construction. As the bakers start making their hot water crust, Paul mentions that a critical part of this challenge will be sealing the lid onto the pies so that they won’t fall off.

Matty, the Star Baker from last week, is doing a take on Greek spanakopita. 

Meanwhile, Dana is making a potato dauphinoise for her pie that sounds like a pithivier. (That comes up later.) 

Other bakers are working with raw pork. Tasha’s filling is inspired by her Christmas stuffing, which she is hoping will help her pull a third Star Baker award. Josh is also working with pork with some post-match picnic pies. 

Dan and Saku are looking to spice up the competition. Saku is making a Sri Lanka version of her spicy tuna pies which involves a quail egg while Dan is making a lamb keema-inspired pie with his homemade spice pies. 

Nicky struggles with her hot water mix and has to restart her dough for her meat pies.

Another baker who struggles is Rowan. Rowan’s picnic pies don’t include any ventilation for steam. Rowan’s logic is that the steam will get trapped in the layer of bacon. Alison encourages him to prick a few holes when he tries to point out a clue Paul Hollywood gave him. 

Cristy is also working with leek, garlic, and mushrooms and is hoping that this week will bring her up substantially from her subpar showing the previous week. 

As time winds down, Cristy starts panicking because she doesn’t like the look of her pies and starts crying just a bit. Rowan also finds that her pies are soggy on the bottom and one of them gets stuck in the tin. Something he says never happened before. 

Once the challenge concludes, it’s time for the judges to taste all the pies. 

The judges loved the flavors of Matty’s pie but felt his lid was too thick and his lattice top didn’t quite pull it off. 

Tasha’s Christmas stuffing picnic pies got high praise from Paul and Prue, especially her mustard bottom. 

The judges find a soggy bottom in Saku’s pies which Saku says is “heartbreaking” in a way only Saku can. Her flavors earn high praise but her pastry needs to be thinner. 

Dan’s lamb keema pie is “ripped and all over the place.” While Paul likes the flavor, Prue says that it’s a very dense pie and would be hard work to eat the whole pie. 

Unlike Dan, Dana gets high praise for her presentation and flavor in her potato dauphinoise pies and both judges love the flavor. However, Paul criticizes the unevenness of her crust and her top being too thick.  

Then comes Rowan’s pies, which Paul has a great time going through looking for a good fully constructed pie. The judges loved his flavors.

Prue: If it had just looked a bit better, you would have had an absolute triumph. 

Josh’s post-match pies have a lot of good flavor but his pork sausage stuffing shrunk and left a large gap between the crust and the filling. Prue suggests that Josh consider about putting a jelly in for another iteration. 

Nicky’s pastry is undercooked and it’s overall called “gluey” but the judges. Nicky acknowledges that it’s a disaster. 

Last is Cristy. Cristy gets high praise from Prue and Paul, and a Hollywood handshake! 

Paul: It’s because you managed to achieve the moistness and the flavor in a small area, and have that lattice top look so nice. 

Technical Challenge: Dauphinoise Pathivier

Paul set the technical challenge for this week and it’s a dauphinoise pithivier with crisp rough puff pastry encasing creamy potato and caramelized onion alongside a blue cheese sauce. 

Before the judges leave Paul says that the textures on the inside and the outside are critical to this bake. When talking to Prue he says they are really testing the bakers on the pastry itself. (That really shouldn’t be surprising since it is pastry week!) 

Very quickly, questions about the pastry come to light. Some bakers decide to laminate their butter into their bake while others start rubbing it in. Some start adding their butter in stages while others just dump the whole thing in. 

One thing most people know is that this needs to be cold or you won’t get the flakiness. 

Making the dauphinoise potatoes leads to the first kitchen injury as well when Dan grates his finger and gets blood on his pastry. 

As they get to half an hour left the bakers start to put their pithivier into the oven and make the blue cheese sauce with several bakers getting nervous that their pastry won’t puff. Many bakers wait until the last minute to take out their pithivier. 

The judges come in and start looking for a domed pithivier with a flaky pastry. 

The dome shape is the biggest critique the judges have for the line of pithiviers. Many are also undercooked and two even have raw potatoes. 

The ranking for this challenge is fairly predictable based on the contestants’ performance. Nicky is in ninth place and Josh is in eighth place. 

Seventh place is Matty, Saku is sixth, Cristy is fifth, Rowan is fourth, and Tasha is third. Dana is second, no surprise given that she worked with a similar filling for her signature, and Dan is first with a perfectly domed pithivier that looks very professional.

Showstopper Challenge: Decorative Sweet Pie Trio

Going into the showstopper challenge it’s clear that Nicky and Rowan need to step up their game in order to avoid being sent him this week. Following a chat with the judges and some very flat jokes it’s time to go into the decorate sweet pie trio. 

They have four hours to make three sweet pies that are highly decorative with lattice work and plaiting on the top and the themes range across the board for this challenge.

Cristy is making a woodland themed pie display. Rowan is working on pies inspired by his favorite sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. Josh and Nicky are both paying tribute to their grandmothers.

Saku’s bake is one the judges are specifically excited for. Not only is her display going to be an inforgraphic theme, but she’s also replacing some of the butter in her pastry dough with cream cheese. Something Prue is suspicious of, but Saku says it’s a melt-in-the mouth pastry.

Three bakers are also inspired by their favorite travels. Dan is working on three pies based on his favorite South American destinations and Tasha is working on a sea and mountain theme with some British sign language details. Matty is also working on a apres ski theme. 

As time ticks down, many of the bakers find their pies are spilling out with Rowan’s pie even cracking in half. 

Then it’s time to judge the showstoppers. 

First is Cristy, who earns high praise for her presentation and flavors. Paul really loves her raspberry frangipan. 

Tasha’s pies don’t present as well, but the judges love the flavor. 

Dan’s pies are middling. While they look great, one has a sandy crust, one has a very flat flavor, and some of his fruit texture doesn’t work quite well.

Dana’s show stopper works in extremes. The first being a little sweet and underbaked and the second too sour. 

Matty’s pie is called “rustic” in presentation and many of his fillings are undercooked. 

Then comes Saku’s whose presentation is hailed by Prue as “fresh.” But her filling is full of raw fruit in her first pie, but the cinnamon level is perfect in her second pie. 

Josh’s pies present really with their sunflower shape and Paul praises his pies saying “this is what we’ve been looking for.”

Then we get to Rowan’s pies, which Paul struggles to get onto the plate because nothing is set. Prue even says that it’s awful and looks clumsy. His third pie is too solid and dry. 

Last comes Nicky, whose presentation is great, but her applie pie gives Paul his first experience of a dry apple pie. Her second pie has too little filling, but her third was a good flavor.

Star Baker and Elimination

After the judges debate it’s time to announce Star Baker.

This week, it’s awarded to Cristy for her consistency throughout the week. It’s high time she got this honor too, because while I wouldn’t say she’s taken risks, she has shown a level of artistry that I don’t think many bakers have shown throughout this season. 

She puts a lot of thought into her bakes and that’s what makes her stand out. Plus, it’s great to see her bounce back from the disasterous chocolate week. 

Next, comes the double elimination. The two bakers going home are Nicky and Rowan, which is not surprising because it felt like these two were nearing the end of their stay. 

Nicky has struggled with flavor and little things throughout the last four weeks. It’s clear it was coming, but I will miss her wit and humor throughout the remaining episodes.

Rowan has always wavered with some great experiments, but he’s also had some terrible presentations in the past. His presentation with chocolate week also wasn’t the greatest and having those two subpar weeks in a row didn’t really help matters. 

What are your thoughts on this week’s episode of The Great British Baking Show? Let us know in the comments below. 

The Great British Baking Show airs new episodes Fridays on Netflix. 

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

15 Cooking Competition Shows We’d Love to Be On