The Greatest British Bakes of All Time
With Season 17 only days away, we run down the Greatest British Bakes to ever grace the tent.
The Great British Baking Show is back, just in time for the fall baking season! This year marks a brand new chapter as Paul Hollywood is joined by his third co-judge in less than two decades, Food Network icon Nigella Lawson. As the series now rounds into what we might consider its third iteration, it’s a perfect time to look back over the Mary Berry and Prue Leith years and highlight some of the best bakes produced in the tent.
Much like the title change from Bake Off to Baking Show, the season numbering on American Netflix is still three off from the actual season count. (2026 marks Season 17 of the series; Netflix continues to insist on calling it “Collection 14.") That’s because PBS didn’t start airing the series over here until it moved to BBC One, which in the U.K. was Bake Off Series 5. PBS was so overwhelmed by the success that it asked for more right away, which is how Baking Show Season 2 became the previous year’s Bake Off Series 4.
PBS eventually backtracked to Bake Off Series 3 in 2018 after losing the rights to future seasons when the show moved from the BBC to Channel 4. Still, Netflix refused to include it in the count (as that would have created two “Collection 5s” at the time), so the American numbering remains off by three.
The irony is that most of this is moot, since Netflix gave up the rights to the seasons that aired on PBS (and the ones that never aired in the States), all of which are currently available on Roku. But whatever numbering system you choose to use, the bakes are still the most important part of the series. Let’s run down the most memorable.
