12 Lessons We Learned From The Great British Baking Show

The American public's fascination with cooking shows didn't suddenly start with "The Great British Baking Show" in the 21st century. "The French Chef" with Julia Child gained a following starting in the 1960s, "Emeril Live" was hugely popular in the '90s, and cooking competition shows like "Top Chef" have made everyday chefs into household names. But what's different (and endearing) about "The Great British Baking Show" is that the contestants are amateur bakers. Consequently, they're quite similar to the viewers, who often see themselves in these bakers — and may be inspired to learn how to bake, as well.

Even if you're not watching "The Great British Baking Show" to learn from the feedback of renowned bakers like Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith, it's almost impossible not to pick up a few tips from every episode. Whether the bakers are making French patisserie, meat pies with a rough puff pastry, gingerbread houses, or Swiss rolls, the learning potential from "The Great British Baking Show" feels endless.

Each episode is split into three bakes: a signature bake, technical challenge, and showstopper. While the bakers can practice the signature bake and showstopper at home, the technical is always a surprise. Here are some of the best tips we've learned from watching the "The Great British Baking Show" and the 450-plus challenges seen on the series.

Avoiding a soggy bottom has become somewhat synonymous with "The Great British Baking Show." For instance, in Season 14, Episode 5, fan-favorite Saku Chandrasekara was told her spicy tuna pies had a soggy bottom by Paul Hollywood. Regardless of the cheekiness of the phrase, avoiding one is crucial if you want to bake pastry that's evenly cooked with a crisp crust.

When building a pie that contains a lot of moisture — whether from fruit, meat, or sauce — it's imperative that the crust doesn't lose its integrity from soaking up too much of the fillings. One of the best ways to avoid a soggy bottom is to blind bake, allowing the pastry to partially cook before adding any filling. To ensure the crust does not puff up while blind baking, the baker can weigh it down with baking beads or uncooked rice on a piece of parchment paper.

Another way to ensure the crust doesn't become soggy is to add reinforcements. If a baker is making a rough puff pastry to make a denser meat pie, it can help to add starches to soak up the juices of the meat before it hits the crust. For a fruit pie, an egg white wash can prevent a soggy bottom by creating a barrier between the filling and crust.

Viewers have seen many contestants complain during bread week, as it's when the strength for kneading dough is required. However, the opposite is needed for baking pastry and handling laminated dough, which is dough that's had butter folded into it multiple times.

Consider what Nancy Birthwhistle – the Season 5 winner of "The Great British Baking Show" — stated in 2016. Pastry dough "doesn't like being handled and hates being warm," she said, so only work it for "10 seconds to break the fat into the flour and give the appearance of breadcrumbs, then a further 10 seconds once you've added the liquid." Furthermore, while bread may need additional proving time in a warmer temperature, laminated dough needs resting time in a cooler temperature.

When making pastries, like croissants, you'll need to roll out the dough and fold it back together a few times. In between the roll outs, the pastry dough is put back in the fridge to ensure the butter doesn't melt while resting. When done correctly, by the time it reaches the oven, steam rises from the butter melting and lifts the layers apart. If the dough did not rest properly, it might cause the dough to leak — like in season 14, when Dan Hunter's sausage rolls created a gap from the butter leakage during Episode 8.

When contestants on "The Great British Baking Show" pull out their bakes too late (which is often, given they're on a time crunch in every episode), it's heartbreaking to watch. After all, viewers know the bakers will have to start decorating before it's fully cooled, risking the final appearance of the finished product. This happened in the first episode of Season 15, in fact, when at least half of the contestants incorrectly predicted their baking time, resulting in multiple decorative elements melting.

On that note, viewers have seen sugar work collapse, buttercream separate and melt, gelatin turn into liquid, jams absorbed into the sponge, and icing become too thin. Of course, this makes sense when you consider additional elements often have a different melting point.

Now, it can take a few hours for larger cakes to fully cool. But to speed up the process, bakers can put their cakes in the fridge. This is why viewers often see bakers rushing to the fridge — and even the freezer — when they're pressed for time. If bakers cannot wait for their sponge to cool, adding a chocolate glaze, fresh fruit, or a sprinkle of confectioners' sugar won't be as affected by temperature if it's been chilled in a cold appliance.

For an inexperienced baker, seeing how many types of pastry exist can be daunting. The most common ones discussed on "The Great British Baking Show" are choux pastry, short crust pastry, puff pastry, and rough puff pastry — with viewers learning how important it is to use the correct one.

Choux pastry is cooked on a stove, then piped into desserts like cream puffs, beignets, or eclairs. It can also be used for savory dishes (such as chouquettes and dumplings), or more complicated desserts like croquembouches or Paris-Brest (which was seen in the showstopper round in the fifth episode of season 15). Meanwhile, short crust pastry is made in a food processor or by hand, and is used for a wide variety of dishes including sweet fruit pies and quiches. It doesn't rise, but it can be light and flaky, which is ideal for a crust that you want to melt in your mouth.

As for puff pastry, it's exactly as it sounds. The lamination from the butter will cause it to puff up, making it ideal for thicker pies and tarts. Rough puff pastry takes it just a bit further, and is ideal for mille-feuille, Danishes, and sausage rolls (as well as this recipe for beef wellington with added prosciutto). However, unlike standard puff pastry, rough puff doesn't rise and keeps its fillings fully contained.

All of the loaves and pastry dough made for the show are utilized on the same day of filming. Now, outside of filming, it's possible to prove at a colder temperature for a longer period of time, usually overnight. But to cook a loaf or pastry the same day, it needs to prove at a warm temperature between 75 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit, as we learned from "The Great British Baking Show."

Proving is the last step before baking and this is when the dough continues to ferment, build up acidity, and increase in volume (to double the size) into its final shape. One contestant's loaf was underproved in the third episode of Season 14, in fact, causing it to cave in as it cooled.

Depending on the size of the dough (and whether it has yeast, sourdough, or other ingredients affecting its recipe), it can take anywhere from 1 ½ hours to 3 hours when proving at warm temperatures. If you're working with pastry and not bread, the dough will need to prove after every rollout and fold. Proving allows the dough time to rest in between folds, so lamination can occur in the oven.

While gluten plays a more crucial role in developing the structure of bread, eggs are actually what gives a cake sponge its structure. Either way, "The Great British Baking Show" taught us the sponge you use matters to your bake.

A genoise sponge, for instance, is made by beating eggs with sugar until it's similar to a mousse, before folding in the flour and butter. These sponges are moist from the fat in the butter, but still light in texture, which may be why Season 14 winner Matty Edgell chose this sponge for his winning showstopper (as pictured above). Additionally, a joconde sponge is quite similar to a genoise except that it has added nuts, usually almonds, in its batter. Joconde is commonly used for a classic opera cake recipe.

Chiffon cakes are the lightest of them all, as the egg yolks and egg whites are added separately, giving the cake a fluffier structure. Chiffon cakes also have baking powder and oil, giving you the lightness of a sponge but the richness of a butter cake. All of the sponges can be used for stacking, but it depends on the individual recipe and the thickness of each tier to determine if it will be sturdy enough without condensing the sponge.

Caramel is finicky. Consisting of sugar mixed with liquid glucose or milk and butter, it can be difficult to make (and is easily overcooked). To make caramel, you first turn the burner on low and heat the mixture until the sugar starts to melt. The key to caramel is to avoid disturbing it by mixing it — something both contestants and viewers have learned on "The Great British Baking Show." For example, in the fourth episode of Season 12 (titled "Caramel Week"), we saw one contestant confess to making this mistake, and even consider redoing her caramel for her florentines.

Shaking the pan occasionally is all caramel will need as it cooks to a boil. Once the caramel reaches a light brown color, which should only take a few minutes, it's time to take the caramel off the heat. Immediately place the pot into an ice bath to stop the cooking and prevent any burning.

Another common mistake with caramel is seeing it develop into a grainy texture, which can happen when the sugar doesn't melt down evenly. Caramel can start to crystallize when the heat is too high, after all (which is also a sign of burning). If there are only a few crystals on the side of the pan, adding a bit of water can encourage it to dissolve and join the rest of the caramel mixture.

Soft, rich, chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies (with beautifully piped icing) are oh so tasty. But these cookies, like the viral chocolate chip ones made by Crumbl, won't help you with building a cookie structure. Building requires fully-baked, possibly even a little overbaked, biscuits that are thick enough to not break under some weight, but thin enough so there is no soft middle.

If not baked properly, biscuits may not hold when you're creating a structure, like seen in every season's biscuit week mishaps. This is often why contestants choose gingerbread over biscuits or cookies that are best when soft and slightly underbaked (such as chocolate chip or sugar cookies).

Additionally, many biscuit designs are held together with a form of sugar, such as caramel or royal icing, and contestants have built some extraordinary bakes. This includes Terry's exquisite Christmas in New York from Episode 11, Season 10 (where he built the Empire State Building out of gingerbread biscuit), as well as Luis's George Versus the Dragon biscuit sculpture from the Season 5.

Pavlova is a baked meringue that's topped with cream and fruit. While the ingredients are very simple — often a mixture of egg whites, sugar, and an acid of some sort — the preparation is what makes it spectacular.

There are three standard types of meringue: Italian, Swiss, and French. All three can be used to make pavlova, but each of them require a different cooking method, which can affect the structure. While French meringue is the lightest and most ideal, it's also the most finicky and likeliest to crack. Still, it's the one most commonly used for baked meringue recipes, like this one for a matcha berry pavlova wreath.

Choosing Italian or Swiss meringue allows you to cook the meringue outside of the oven on the stovetop and have a bit more control over the dish. Once the meringue is cooked (or can fully pull away from the baking sheet) and cooled to room temperature, you can add the cream and fruit toppings of your choice. Unfortunately, in the fourth episode of Season 12, George removed his meringue too soon, causing his pavlova to crack.

Whether baking or frying, golden brown is usually the ideal color to look for when determining if dough is baked. Of course, just as incorporating fruit can make a cake seem underdone, viewers of "The Great British Baking Show" know adding color to a dough can fool you into thinking it's done before it's actually ready.

Cocoa powder is a common culprit because it can color dough from light to rich brown. For instance, during the ninth season, Antony used cocoa in one showstopper, with the finished bake having a richer dark brown hue as a result.

Natural food colorings can also adjust the final product, taking on many colors of the rainbow. Common natural food colorings other than cocoa include butterfly pea powder, red cabbage juice, coffee, matcha, turmeric, saffron, carrots, and berries. To avoid taking out your bakes before they're done when differently colored, it's important to check for other indicators of a finished bake. This includes checking its texture, and matching the timing of the recipe as closely as possible.

The shiny chocolate bars, beautiful mirror glazes, and exquisite truffles you see in your favorite chocolate shop all have one thing in common: they were made with tempered chocolate. Of course, tempering chocolate is hard to do, as "The Great British Baking Show" has taught us. After all, you have to heat chocolate up, bring it back down a little as you add in more ingredients, then heat it back up again — all while making sure it doesn't surpass its maximum and minimum temperatures.

Dark chocolate requires a slightly higher temperature for tempering, whereas milk and white chocolate can be tempered at the same temperature. When chocolate is tempered, it will look smooth and glossy when it cools — just like Nadiya's chocolate peacock from the ninth episode of season 6. It will also snap and break apart, versus just melting upon meeting the warmth of your hands.

Sponge cakes are known for having a light and fluffy texture. When adding in fruit and its respective weight, it can drastically affect the texture and its cooking time — a lesson many of us have learned from "The Great British Baking Show" over the years.

Fruit adds both weight and moisture. This means it can affect the rise of a sponge, and potentially fool a baker when performing the toothpick test (when a toothpick is inserted into the sponge to check if it's done). If the toothpick hits fruit, it can confuse the baker into thinking the sponge is not done when it may be fully cooked already. Additionally, if the baker is stacking fruit cakes, it becomes even more important to make sure the sponges are fully cooked so the finished bake doesn't collapse.

In the first episode of Season 8, we saw James' orange, ginger, and rhubarb cake presented underdone because he chose two fruits with high water content, affecting his sponge. There are two ways to avoid pulling out a fruit cake underdone. The first is to use the fruit sparingly in the recipe to avoid saturation of the sponge. The second is to simply perform the toothpick test in multiple spots. If you perform the toothpick test successfully in multiple spots, and the sponge bounces back lightly when touched, then the sponge is done.