'The Great British Baking Show' Season 8, Episode 3 Recap: Bread Week

Bread Week has always held a special place in The Great British Baking Show pantheon. While Mary Berry and now Prue Leith have always been about the cakes and cookies, judge Paul Hollywood is a bread man, through and through. No contestant that fails out in Bread Week can make it to the winner's circle, simply because Paul bars the door. Though it is not precisely a truism that the winner of Bread Week is an auto-shoo-in for the final, it certainly helps get one to the Top Five at least.

This week is all about Paul, which also means it's all about his patented "Hollywood Handshake," which explains the opening. It also explains why this week is the first where the lack of going home and practicing in one's kitchen all week starts to come to the fore for these bakers. It's one thing for the first couple of showstoppers to be a little on the Nailed It! side, especially since this is the first time they've been quarantined in a "Baking Village" and the BakeOff Bubble takes some getting used to. But the pressure this week will take the air out of some rising.

This week's Signature is Soda Bread, two of them, one sweet and one savory. They also have to make butter to go with it. Soda bread is defined as bread made with sodium bicarbonate instead of yeast, so proofing is unnecessary. Due to how fast this rising goes, there's only an hour and 45 minutes for this challenge. As always, the Signature is judged on a pass/fail metric.