Paul Hollywood Eats A Baby On GBBO's Bread Week

In 82 years of television history, there has been only one food program(me) whose greatness exceeds that of the The Great British Bake Off Baking Show, and that is Hannibal. Sure, it's primarily a sociopathic love story between a mentally ill FBI agent and a cannibalistic serial killer, but it's also about food, and the fact that food is made with human meat doesn't make it look any less sumptuous. I understand that this reads as a joke, but I swear on Paul Hollywood's jeans that I'm being serious... deadly serious.

I nearly brought up Hannibal in last week's Biscuit Week recap after hearing Jürgen utter the words "Dust in icing sugar, leaving the heart visible" during the technical challenge, but I decided against it, feeling that a German cannibal joke was entirely unfair to Germany.

Ever since some shit went down 20 years ago, Germans have had to put up with a lot of cannibalism jokes, and they don't deserve it. (Not least of all because there aren't that many famous German cannibals.) What the people of Germany deserve is a hero with an incandescent genius that drops us to our knees in awe. A hero with a soft, gentle kindness that can win every human heart. A hero that can stand in front of an international audience and make a functional windmill out of cookies. Jürgen is that hero, rising to the challenge with a mighty whisk, blinding us with brilliant bakes, and scrubbing all those hideous German stereotypes straight out of our hea...

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DAMMIT, JÜRGEN.

Focaccia's an Italian bread. Paul points out there's an Italian in the tent, to which Giuseppe's like, "Oh no, the pressure!" Nevertheless, Giuseppe ends up killing it. He gets the first Paul Hollywood Handshake of the season, blah blah blah, we have bigger things to address. Next.

The most important takeaway from this round is that the Paul Hollywood pronounces ciabatta as "CHEE-ah-BAH-tah," which is slightly funnier than when he pronounces genoise as "jen-oh-WHEEZE." Jürgen comes in fifth, Giuseppe comes in first, everyone claps. Let's move on.

The proper name of the challenge is "themed display of milk bread," and of the nine non-German bakers, four contestants made bread that looked like other foods, five contestants made bread that looked like animals, and three of those five animals were octopuses.

But Jürgen did not craft an octopus. He tells us that the moment the producers notified him of the technical challenge, he and his wife "immediately" had the same thought: EDIBLE BABY.

Jürgen's logic that babies are round and tasty wasn't entirely unsound, because I've definitely seen a few round babies in my time, and though I never licked any of them, who's to say those babies weren't sweet? Jürgen spent both Cake Week and Biscuit Week dominating the tent with his mastery of flavor, technical prowess, and artistic eye, so I'm sure he wouldn't design a baby that would be remotely concerni... wait, haven't I seen this before?

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If you haven't seen Game of Thrones, I will not fuck up your day by explaining this. If you have seen Game of Thrones, then I assure you that you were not alone in any worry you might have had as Jürgen slapped his sticky dough against the counter. Perhaps you prayed, as I did, that by the time he presented his baby bread to Paul and Prue, it would resemble a happy infant and nothing more.

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Nope, it came out exactly like the drawing. And then, in front of tens of millions of viewers across the world, Paul Hollywood dismembered and ate a baby on The Great British Baking Show.

In other news, Giuseppe was crowned Star Baker, Rochicha went home, no one ran away screaming from Jürgen's Bread Baby, and no one audibly cheered when the baby was slain with a serrated knife. Hopefully his poor Bread Week showing has taught Jürgen a lesson about the optics of cannibalism, and he'll go straight back to making spectacular baked goods that aren't capable of making eye contact as they are destroyed.

Here's where you can find our other Great British Baking Show recaps from this season:

• Meet The Bakers
• Week One: Cake Week
• Week Two: Biscuit Week