The First Hollywood Handshake For A Gluten-Free Bake Came In The Great British Baking Show’s Free-From Week, On Netflix November 6
The Great British Baking Show’s Free-From Week arrives on Netflix on Friday, November 6, as Episode 7 of Collection 14. Every bake had to be gluten-free, dairy-free or vegan, and Channel 4, the show’s British network, says the week produced the first Hollywood Handshake ever given to a gluten-free bake.
The results come later in this story, below a clear warning, so you can read the first half before you watch.
In Britain, where the show is called The Great British Bake Off, the episode aired on Tuesday, November 3, under the title Free-From Party Week. “Free-from” is the British grocery label for food made without an ingredient such as gluten or dairy. Six bakers were left, and a spot in the quarter-final was on the line.
New to the show? The terms in this episode
Each week has three rounds. The Signature is the bakers’ own recipes on the week’s theme. The Technical is a recipe set by one of the judges, Paul Hollywood or Nigella Lawson, who joined this season. The Showstopper is the big display bake. At the end, one baker is named Star Baker, the week’s best, and one leaves the tent. A Hollywood Handshake is Paul Hollywood shaking a baker’s hand over a single bake, the show’s best-known compliment.
The three challenges
Signature: gluten-free, dairy-free or vegan treats, as reported by the Mirror.
Technical: Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Axolotl Cake, a cake shaped like the smiling Mexican salamander. The Mirror called it an “adorable animal cake.” The show’s official recipe describes a plant-based chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache filling and Ermine buttercream, a frosting built on a cooked flour paste. It says the same cake can be decorated as seven different animals. It’s vegan and dairy-free, but it uses plain (all-purpose) flour, so it isn’t gluten-free.
Showstopper: a children’s birthday cake with an interactive element, according to the Mirror.
It follows Pastry Week, which brought Nigella’s karpatka to the tent.
Free-from cookies to bake while you watch
None of these is a Bake Off recipe. If you’re baking for someone with celiac disease or a food allergy, check every label, since cocoa, chocolate chips and candy can carry gluten or milk.
- Gluten-Free Chocolate Peppermint Thumbprint Cookies: a cocoa-peppermint cookie made with gluten-free all-purpose flour, its center filled with a ganache of dairy-free dark chocolate and coconut cream, then topped with crushed peppermint candies. The dough has butter and an egg. For a dairy-free cookie, the post suggests vegan butter.
- Gluten-Free Bourbon Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies: gluten-free flour, browned butter and a splash of bourbon, with dark chocolate chips, butter-toasted pecans and flaky salt on top.
- Flourless Chocolate Cake Cookies: no flour at all. Cocoa, powdered and granulated sugar, eggs and chocolate chips make a fudgy cookie with a crackly top. Use cocoa and chips labeled gluten-free if you need them to be.
For a birthday-cake nod to the Showstopper without the baking from scratch, Doughy’s cashew-based dough comes in a Birthday Cake flavor at Target. Doughy says its dough is gluten-free, egg-free and dairy-free. It’s made with cashews, so it isn’t for a tree-nut allergy.
What’s next
Episode 8 is the quarter-final. In Britain it airs on Tuesday, November 10. If Netflix keeps its Friday pattern, it reaches US viewers on Friday, November 13.
Spoiler warning: the rest of this story names the week’s Star Baker and the baker who left. Stop here if you haven’t watched Episode 7.
Who won Star Baker and who went home
Gabe was named Star Baker, and Gary became the seventh baker to leave, Channel 4 announced on Wednesday, November 4. Gary is a retired garment technologist from Chesterfield, England.
“I am really really proud, yeah I just didn’t expect to get this far,” he said in Channel 4’s release. Asked for his least favorite challenge of the series, he named Free-From, “as it’s not something I have practiced a lot at home.” His standout moment was when Paul Hollywood called him a good baker.
On Second Helpings, Channel 4’s new companion show, host Jon Richardson called Gary’s Showstopper an “interactive cauldron cake,” the Mirror reported. Gary said the judges’ problem was “the taste,” not the look. Of the Technical, he said the sponges (the cake layers) were nice, “but the actual finish, I was really upset about that one.”
What viewers said
Some UK viewers thought the judges got it wrong. The Mirror rounded up posts on X after the episode, including “Wrong decision. Wrong decision. So so so so wrong,” and “Much as I love Connie, Gary’s showstopper was much better. Totally unfair.”
Gary, for his part, said he saw it coming. “I felt it before they told me,” he told Channel 4.
Featured image: our Flourless Chocolate Cake Cookies, not a Bake Off recipe.