It was bread week this week on the Great British Bake Off and Edinburgh’s own Peter Sawkins was out to impress the judges while paying tribute to his Scottish roots.
The technical challenge saw the bakers tasked with creating a Harvest bread plaque representing something they were grateful for.
Of course Pete chose to render the iconic Edinburgh skyline in dough, complete with the Forth Rail Bridge in the foreground.
While visually impressive, the judges found it lacking.
Paul Hollywood described it as “simple and sort of effective” adding that the Edinburgh student, “could have done more with it”.
“All your flavours are coming from the seeds on the top and the dried herbs,” he said.
But after biting into the baker’s creation the Bake off judge Prue Leith had her own criticisms of the bake.
Prue commented, “It tastes very nice, I just feel it’s a little dense and tough.”
Meanwhile Paul Hollywood took a piece of the bake in his hands flexing it back and forth commenting: “You shouldn’t be able to do that with bread.”
“It’s like a piece of leather,” agreed Prue. Oh dear.
But, despite the fact that Pete’s edible Edinburgh resembled the density of actual brick, he had done enough on the technical challenge and the first round’s soda bread challenge to make it through to the next week.
So what locally-inspired delights can we expect from Pete next episode? A pasty version of the Pentlands? Morningside rendered in marzipan? We’ll have to wait and see.
