Raise your whisks and preheat your ovens, bakers, because The Great British Baking Show is back and better than ever.
Released as part of the 2022 TV schedule, The Great British Baking Show is always a fun time for fans of cooking shows as well as baking shows. We watch some amazing bakers create some delectable items that I’m sure most of us would love to taste. Sadly, they haven’t made a show yet where you can taste through the TV; what a shame.
But, for those who religiously watch the show, have you ever wondered exactly how the elimination game works? Believe it or not, it’s actually quite simple, and something I think anyone who enjoys these cooking competition shows would like to learn.
For The Signature Bakes, The Judges Use A Scoring System
Alongside Paul Hollywood, judge Prue Leith has made some amazing choices in picking who should win and who shouldn’t, but for the Signature Bakes round – which is known to be the first round that bakers are able to show off their personality a little more – a score-based system is often used. Leith spoke to E! News about how it’s done on the show:
You don't see this, but we actually score everybody, which is helpful to us.
It’s in this section that Leith and Hollywood will score whatever the bakers have created, but they “just don’t tell the bakers about it.” From there, they make their decisions.
For The Technical Bakes, The Finished Products Are Judged By How Close They Resemble The Original Bake
The scoring system for the second round, the Technical Bake, is a little more ambiguous, as no one has really quite explained it yet. For those who don’t know, the Technical Bake of the competition, according to the official website, is all about precision, where bakers are given a basic recipe with the “same ingredients and instructions” and have to go at it to make the finished product.
To be honest, it sounds a lot easier said than done, because sometimes, the recipe may seem basic to the judges but requires some techniques or knowledge that the bakers might not have, so that’s where the challenge is. The closest it looks to the finished product, the closer you get to moving on to the second round.
Something else that is fun to know is that Leith and Hollywood don’t bake the cakes that are used in the technical round or really any round in the show – that’s actually all thanks to their home economics team. A little The Great British Baking Show fun-fact for you.
For The Showstopper Bakes, If They’re Stuck, The Judges Evaluate Every Bake The Person Has Done
The final round of the show is always the biggest one – the Showstopper Bake, where bakers are given free reign to show off their skills and talents. Leith said that sometimes, this round especially can be the hardest, because sometimes there are two contestants that are so close to each other, they need to revisit the tape and look at their past baking experiences in the competition in order to figure out who wins:
If we get to the stage, and we often do, where it seems to all come down to the Showstopper and there's a disagreement where I think somebody is slightly better than the other, we'll go back and look at how they did the day before.
And sometimes, that point system isn’t enough, where they’ll go back even further if she and Hollywood are struggling:
If we're still stuck and we're still genuinely unable to choose somebody and we think, ‘This is crazy, these two people are absolutely equal,’ we will go back and look at how they've done up until then in the competition, which we normally don't do.
We’re not sure how the finale works in terms of scoring and elimination, but since this is how it’s done throughout the whole competition, you can use this as sort of a blueprint for the finale, if you’re ever curious.
While there are so many great holiday-themed baking shows to watch or even just regular baking shows to enjoy, The Great British Baking Show has always remained a popular one – and now, you have a little bit of insight into how those winners are chosen.
