'The Great British Baking Show' Season 7 Semi-Final Recap: Pâtisserie

The Great British Baking Show keeps things traditional with a return to Pâtisserie for this season's semi-final. This has been the standard semi-final challenge nearly every year since Series 2 (which has never aired in the US.) Series 4 and 6 (Seasons 2 and 3 for PBS viewers) are the only ones that didn't stick to this strict line-up -- Series 6 did it a week early, Series 4 replaced it with "French Pastries," which was a "same church different pew" move.

This season, the challenges have gone a bit off the wall, as if the show feels like they're running out of ideas. (This also happened last season, but the Netflix binge format made it so American audiences didn't feel it as much.) So it's comforting to see the production is willing to stick to the same shape of the competition, even if it makes the contestants do terrible things in the name of creativity. (Such as making pie dough structural and then wondering why everyone's pies were dry as dust. Hello? You demanded the dough be structural! What on Earth did you think was going to be the result?!)

The opening Signature Challenge sounds concerning, but it's pretty in line with other semi-final challenges, the domed tartlet, which is a french pastry shop staple. These are small bite-sized pastries with a jelly semicircle top on them. The challenge is to make a set of eight matching domes, and they have to make sure that no one in the tent can make boob jokes about their appearances.