On final week’s episode of “The Nice British Bake Off,” choose Prue Leith made what she could have thought was a complimentary comment about Syabira Yusoff, one of many bakers: “She’s given us a number of humorous flavors, they usually’ve been great.”
Yusoff then received over Leith and the opposite choose, Paul Hollywood, along with her Patisserie Week signature problem of peanut butter, strawberry and blackberry cream cheese minicharlottes. In praising Yusoff, Leith referred to as her taste mixture “uncommon.”
In an interview after that spherical, Yusoff, who usually incorporates flavors from her Malaysian heritage into her baking, mentioned what many people viewers had been pondering. “They mentioned it’s barely ‘uncommon,’ but it surely does go collectively,” she mentioned. “What does it imply by ‘uncommon’?”
The coded racism from Leith (who, it have to be famous, is an outdated white girl who grew up in apartheid South Africa and has mentioned she voted for Brexit) is par for the present’s course. It’s arduous to think about Leith saying the identical factor if Yusoff had been white. Each judges have periodically expressed skepticism towards components like, say, matcha and yuzu, and towards numerous flavors from primarily nonwhite cultures.
It’s considered one of many longstanding points with the long-running present, from pointless comedy bits to an overuse of gimmicks and stunts ― to not point out theme weeks which have performed out as embarrassing or downright racist. These points have reached a tipping level on this season, the present’s thirteenth, they usually’re undermining the side of the present that’s at all times made it value watching: the bakers themselves.
On Friday, viewers within the U.S. (the place the present airs on Netflix as “The Nice British Baking Present”) will discover out which of the finalists — Yusoff, Sandro Farmhouse, or Abdul Rehman Sharif — will likely be topped this yr’s champion. They, like all of this yr’s bakers, have been beautiful and nice as at all times, an integral a part of the present’s feel-good spirit and attraction. With its light-filled tent and pastel-colored work stations, “Bake Off” has lengthy distinguished itself as a hotter different to typical actuality exhibits that take an usually however not solely American method — the place, because the saying goes, opponents are usually not right here to make associates.
Against this, the contestants on every season of “Bake Off” are very a lot right here to make associates. Typically modest and self-deprecating, they cheer one another on and assist one another out throughout baking crises. It’s arduous to not get just a little misty-eyed when, on the finish of every episode, the baker who “sadly should go away us this week” (because the hosts sometimes put it) tearfully describes how grateful they're to have made a gaggle of latest associates. Because the present has grown in reputation, it’s spawned a whole style of comparable comfort-food actuality TV on either side of the Atlantic. There’s HBO Max’s “The Nice Pottery Throw Down” (like “Bake Off,” however with pottery), and NBC’s “Making It” (like “Bake Off,” however with crafting), all delivering cozy vibes to supply a little bit of respite from our hellscape world.
However increasingly more, the bakers are nearly the one factor conserving “Bake Off” from utterly shedding its means, like a cake careening off its stand within the closing seconds of one of many present’s challenges. Week after week, the bakers are more and more the only motive to maintain tuning in, whereas most all the pieces else round them is a catastrophe, at instances even doing them a disservice.
For years, “Bake Off” followers have identified the present’s overreliance on gimmicks and stunts, comparable to challenges that don’t essentially take a look at baking expertise. The present has reined in a few of these (like Hollywood’s overuse of the Hollywood Handshake), whereas others have solely worsened. For instance, hosts Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding usually take the main focus away from the bakers. They’re comedians, sure, however have they got to show all the pieces right into a bit? And in the event that they do, should their bits vary solely from distracting to corny to inappropriate?
Most infamously, there have been the theme weeks, which have marked actual low factors for the present. In 2020, the horrifically executed Japanese Week provoked criticism for conflating numerous Asian cuisines and components (like placing Indian flavors in a Chinese language steamed bun, throughout what was, once more, Japanese Week). It additionally bafflingly positioned Hollywood as an professional, just because he’d lately visited Japan for a journey present he hosted.
This season’s Mexican Week fiasco proved the present’s producers realized nothing from Japanese Week. The hosts and judges made a mockery of the richness of Mexican delicacies, counting on lazy and cartoonish stereotypes and demonstrating a lack of know-how and due diligence. In case you’re going to be on digital camera speaking about guacamole and pico de gallo, then on the very least, find out how they’re pronounced. And no person needs to see two white British dudes sporting serapes and sombreros, shaking maracas, and smirking about how they actually shouldn’t make Mexican jokes, “not even Juan.”
A number of episodes later, the technical problem for Pastry Week concerned making spring rolls. Leith (whose background, as famous above, doesn't set up her as an authority on Asian cuisines) offered an instance of “spring rolls” that seemed extra like cannoli.
When evaluating the bakers’ accomplished spring rolls, even she and Hollywood appeared confused by the judging standards established by Leith herself ― inconsistent about whether or not the bakers’ spring rolls ought to or mustn't have bubbles on the skin. (They need to not.)
In weeks with culturally particular challenges, it appears apparent that the present ought to at the very least herald visitor judges who really know what they’re speaking about, as an alternative of butchering whole cultures and culinary traditions. However possibly the issues run deeper than that; possibly it’s time for an entire overhaul. For starters, it’s baffling that “Bake Off” has at all times had an all-white slate of hosts and judges. (The producers wouldn’t should look very far to discover a present doing it higher: On “Junior Bake Off,” the kid-oriented model additionally obtainable on Netflix, each judges are folks of colour ― Ravneet Gill and former “Bake Off” contestant Liam Charles.)
The monochrome lineup of judges and presenters is particularly obvious when in comparison with the varied vary of bakers. The contestants usually use their baking to inform a narrative about themselves or pay homage to their households and communities. By being on the present, they usually assist others to really feel seen too. When Nadiya Hussain received “Bake Off” in 2015, it was hailed as a vastly important second for Muslim illustration. As journalist Remona Aly wrote in The Guardian: “That an Asian Muslim girl in a scarf can win a completely British competitors proves that ‘Britishness’ is a broader and extra open idea than some would really like us to assume.” Final yr, baker Lizzie Acker, who has ADHD and dyslexia, made a cake to have fun neurodiversity and reminded viewers that within the U.Okay., about 1 individual in 7 identifies as neurodivergent.
The disconnect between the range of the bakers and the dearth of variety among the many hosts and judges, and the present’s carelessness when taking over culturally particular cuisines, have lengthy been enormous oversights on the present. They’re additionally proof of what “Bake Off” is more and more turning into: out of step with what initially made it nice. For a present engineered to make us really feel good, a lot of it now leaves a bitter style in my mouth. And it makes me really feel unhealthy for the great bakers, who deserve higher.
The bakers are the present’s star components, the rationale to maintain watching. It’s previous time for the remainder of the present to truly mirror them, and to do higher by them.
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