Another week of dough, which means another week of proving stresses.  Lets hope that the corner in the kitchen will work as well this week as it did last week! You can tell that it’s a Paul week, because he was asking more pointed questions about the doughs and prodding them too. How rude!

Signature Bake: Sweet Fruit Loaf
This weeks bake needs to made using an enriched dough, which according to Sue, is a dough that has won the butter lottery!  Its got to be fruity, packed with flavour, quirky and if I was in the bake off trying to please Mary, the key this if to have texture too.

Key points:

1. Enriched dough benefits form a slow prove as the butter, eggs and fruit sit on the yeast and retard it slightly.
2. If it is under proved its dangerous, as there is no point hoping that it will rise more in the oven and save the bake, it won’t.

Bugger, I really thought that the signature bake was going to be the doughnuts, and I had a recipe all planned too!  I can’t do a panettone as it’ll take to long and I did it for the yeasted cake week. Now I have to get the thinking camp on and rethink the whole thing!

Technical Challenge: Povitica
I’m not going to try and pronounce it but Chetna was definitely lucky this week with this being the same as her signature bake.  It think this is the first time that this has ever happened in the Bake Off, which is pretty surprising. This is pretty daunting, an enriched dough, that is a cross between a bread and a pastry. It needs to be rolled thin, filled and and rolled into a long sausage that needs to be coiled into a loaf tin. What could possibly go wrong?

Showstopper Challenge: Doughnuts (36, two flavours)
It was two years ago that they had doughnuts as the technical challenge and I was really looking forward to making these again. Unfortunately the chocolate rum doughnuts are going to have to wait for another time.  Martha was ambitious with her laminated doughnut, which I think would have been like the growingly popular CroNut, if it had worked.  I love Richard fairground flavours, but I would never be able to make rhubarb & custard in my house. The boyfriend is strongly against rhubarb and I have not been able to convince him that it is not the food of the devil!

My favourites this episode:

1. Nancy was definitely being a brit risqué this week, but you have to admire her bravery to use the microwave for the proving.
2. Richard, he might of been the wing-man to Nancy, and constantly checking our what she was doing with the technical, but his signature was stunning. Plus he got star baker, AGAIN!
3. Luis had another great week.  I liked his idea for the cocktail ring doughnut I thought is a bit risky, but it worked, so well done

And so to the loser which was sadly Martha.  She had a semi success first bake but from there it was downhill.  With a lot her bakes, through out the series her flavours worked but something with the bake has failed her.  I think it is a shame the she is now out, but I have no doubt that we will see her again soon.

I’m off to Rome fort the weekend, which means I’m going to have to cram my baking and blogging into one day! Lets hope I can get some inspiration for the sweet fruit loaf while I’m away, and not get too swayed by pizza, pasta and gelato!