The Great Alaskan Baking Show

The Great Alaskan Baking Show

Hester Buckland owned a bakery in Anchorage, and she was selected to be one of the presenters on The Great Alaskan Baking Show. They were down to five bakers at the end of yesterday’s show, and this morning she seemed to have lost one of her “chicks.” This was “showstopper” day, and only four bakers were standing by their well-provisioned kitchens, carefully assembled in the Bayshore Clubhouse in Anchorage, a beautiful event space with skylights that let in plenty of natural light. Hester had been disappointed not to see the trademark baking show white tents, but it’s Alaska. Going out to the countryside and building gas hookups and electrical outlets in the wilderness, while possible, was expensive and the weather held more severe possibilities than the gentle rains of England.

Duff Goldman and Lorraine Pascale, the judges, both impeccable bakers although with different styles, did not get along like Mary and Paul on the Brit show. Lorraine could get snide and sarcastic, but Duff was a funny guy, and he had a laid-back style so he just smiled and indulged Lorraine most of the time. Lorraine was a very honest judge and, of course, she had that British accent. Although Lorraine’s comments seemed to imply that Duff’s behavior was adolescent, she could be seen smiling at his charming ways on occasion. They were being paid enough to get along on camera.

Hosting the Baking Show was a huge task and there was a big team to help but all the bakes were chosen by the hosts. This competition started with ten bakers and each week of the show one baker was eliminated. You’ve probably seen the show – you know how it works. Each round required three different bakes, so that thirty recipes had to be chosen and there had to be signature bakes, technical challenges and “showstoppers.” Each recipe required the correct cookware and kitchen equipment and the special ingredients each baker required to set their bake apart from the others. What contestants baked changed according to the topic of the week, this being Pastry Week.

Beth McGrath was at the first set kitchen. She is a resident of Fairbanks, a tiny 32-year-old with a face tanned by sun on snow. She has a husband and two children who were willing guinea pigs for all her baking. Chin-length straight brown hair, she looked like a sun-drenched elf.

Steven St. Michael was from Anchorage. He had been born in Alaska, was of African American descent, black father, white mother. No family of his own, but his baked goods were featured at the Flying Dutchman in Anchorage where they made fine European-style pastries. He had a great smile, an expressive face, and warm brown eyes, a mustache and beard, hair worn natural, but not long. He looked like a friendly backwoods bear.

Tom Miller had arrived in Alaska not long ago from northern California. He lived in Juneau now and was a member of a commune of Sufis, who twirled (danced) their way to enlightenment and embraced all religions. Tom ran the kitchen and the commune bake shop – Soul Sugar – a small business run by the commune. Tom had chin length curly blond hair and blue eyes, was very serious and a perfectionist, but also pleasant and thoughtful. Nothing like the surfer boy his facial features resembled.

Janice Wainwright, another blondie with a wife and twins at home. She was ahead because her bakes, while not perfect in form, were incredibly delicious. She and her partner had left New York City to get back to basics and to enjoy the gorgeous surroundings of majestic mountains, glaciers, plentiful wildlife, lots of coastline and quaint villages to be found in Alaska.

These four bakers were at their stations but chatting back and forth, fussing with their work surfaces and the props they had found there for the “showstopper.” Janice had won the signature bake and Tom had won the technical. Beth had come in last in both rounds so she was looking anxious and was telling the other players that she was likely to be eliminated next. What could they say? They made comforting comments and offered hugs and pats on the shoulder.

But where was Josh Jayko, Hester wondered. He was born of a mixed couple, half Inuit, half white. Everyone loved Josh. He was a joker and a minor prankster, offering entertaining banter at appropriate moments. However, he took his baking seriously. He was very handsome, sort of a Luke Evans type. He liked to pay tribute to his native heritage in his bakes without forcing blubber on unaccustomed taste buds. Juniper berries and liquors, nuts and whole flours made baking harder for him as the show tended to feature European cakes, breads, petit fours, puff pastries and phyllo doughs along with classic fillings of all kinds. Sometimes his creations were magical, sometimes an acquired taste, and occasionally a total miss. He was probably going to be the next baker to be eliminated despite what Beth thought.

Lorraine and Duff were due in a few minutes. Never in the history of these baking contests had a baker not shown up without calling to explain. This was uncharted territory, Hester thought, just as her co-host arrived at the venue. Roland and Hester were a great team. They were of the same decade, both in their forties. Roland was gay, but he liked to switch back and forth from acting straight to enjoying the cultural excesses of gayness that society seemed to like. He was a handsome man somewhat resembling Rupert Everett. He had had lots of experience as a baker who researched pastries for cookbooks and did his own share of home baking. He had just broken up with his partner, but he never mentioned it to anyone except Hester. He just got on with it.

Hester had won a baking contest on the Food Channel, and she was given her own show, so people recognized her. She was the heart, the host who noticed when a baker was looking upset, the one who gushed over new spice combinations, or overly heavy, unlikely to defy gravity, decorations. She was the color of toast, tall, model thin, with a few sprinkles of freckles across the bridge of her nose which helped make her less imposing. She wore her hair close to the scalp, but with her great bones it just made her look more beautiful.

Hester and Roland dreaded having to tell Duff and Lorraine about their missing baker, but when those two master bakers arrived, they beckoned the two presenters over and held a whispered huddle at the front of the kitchen near the demonstration and presentation tables. Hester tried not to react but, reflexes betrayed her, and her hand tried to cover her mouth which opened wide in astonishment. Roland just looked grim. Duff asked all the bakers to listen up, but, of course, everyone was already avid to find out what he would say.

“Jason will not be coming in to bake today,” Duff announced. “We debated whether to tell you why or not but have decided that not knowing might make the day harder. Jason was found dead in his cabin outside Anchorage. He appears to have been murdered and there will be an investigation. As you bake today you will be pulled aside and questioned by the police, but they will be quick because they know your time is limited and you probably don’t know much about this tragedy. Try to put this loss out of your mind until we are done taping and then we will mourn him as a group at the end of the day. I know it seems callous, but “the show must go on.”

Duff was unusually somber, and several bakers speculated privately that his new roles as husband and father had given more depth to his emotional range.

“You are already in your places,” said Lorraine. “Is there anything you need to say before taping starts. Anyone need a tissue or a box of tissues?” She waited for a response and all four hands went up. “We brought a coffee for each of us with a little bit of alcohol in it. Let’s make a toast to Jason and to finding his killer or killers fast. We will not be mentioning this to our viewers until the end of the show, so we need you to be brave and act as normal as possible.”

Everyone raised his/her cup and drank the coffee down as if it was a magic elixir that would postpone emotional mishaps.

“Let’s begin,” Duff signaled the camera crews. “Today your challenge is to bake a Croque-en- Bouche and decorate it for a child’s birthday party.” You will have to cool your choux pastry balls quickly because they are usually cooled overnight. A quick trip to the freezer might help but don’t leave them in too long.”

“You were all told about this bake yesterday and were allowed to bring in designs for your construction and the decorations you will use,” Lorraine announced for the benefit of viewers. “You have been given a basic recipe for choux pastry, but the fillings are up to you. Your will have six hours to complete this task.”

“Ready,” said Hester, “Bake!”

Baking is often a great cure for sadness and depression, so it didn’t really seem that odd to get immersed in the comfortable routines of measuring, and the more careful processes of completing a bake that was anything but an everyday family dessert. Choux pastry was not complicated but getting it right required knowledge. It required precision to get the proportions just right and the heat at optimum levels. The filling was usually a vanilla custard, but Beth was doing a caramel filling, Janice a not-too-rich chocolate filling, Tom chose coffee flavored custard and Steven had decided to go with the classic vanilla. There was molten sugar to spin and white chocolate to melt, temper and color, to make animals and circuses and comic book heroes and princesses to delight a child. It was a very ambitious project to throw at these bakers, but it was engrossing and banished grief for the moment.

As soon as Duff and Lorraine retired to a smaller room in the venue and were no longer on camera, Duff took out his phone. He happened to know Mark Harmon, Jethro Gibbs from NCIS, and he also knew that he and his wife, Pam Dawson were currently living in a small town near Anchorage. He called Mark and told him what had happened to Jason Jayko. Although he knew that Mark was not a real agent, that he only played one on TV, he also knew that Mark had made many connections in Alaska with forensic people, and he also knew the medical examiners through David McCullum who was popular with all medical examiners in his role as Duckie. Stars who play a character for a long time often get conflated with the roles they play, and they learn a lot of trade secrets from good script writers.

Lorraine was skeptical that they would get any help from Harmon although he had said he would see what he could find out. Despite her skepticism, she hoped that information would flow to them throughout the days for as long as it took to solve this. Were the other bakers in any danger or the hosts or the presenters? Did someone have a vendetta against The Great Alaska Baking Show or was there a disgruntled and unstable baker out there somewhere. Yes, Lorraine thought with a little shiver of apprehension, better to have sources of possible private information than to expect any news from tight-lipped officials.

After an interminable hour and a half Mark called Duff back and said that David had an old friend in Alaska who was a medical examiner, Archie Bower, and that he used to mine his friend’s experience for lots of good tips to use on NCIS. Jason’s body had been brought to Archie’s lab and he was doing the autopsy. He had the file with pictures of the cabin and summaries of the forensic evidence collected so far. Mark told Duff that he would never be allowed in the cabin where the murder took place, but the crime scene pictures would be a big help. He was going to see Archie in his lab at 1 pm and would get back to Duff when he knew more.

Hester and Roland made the rounds of the bakers asking each one what flavors they would use and what they intended their finished product to look like. Roland commiserated with bakers who were experiencing technical difficulties with components of their choux or fillings or decorations, or time crunches with keeping to baking schedules. Both presenters tasted as they went, exclaiming over components that were finished enough to taste. No one even gave a hint that there were any clouds in their day beyond the common failures in baking complex confections. After a presenter left a baker’s space the baker was taken off for a quick police interview. Police mainly wanted to know if any of the other bakers had seen Jason last night after the day’s taping ended. No one had. Did anyone know if Jason had any enemies? Not that anyone knew of? Did they know what Jason did and what his interests were? They all knew that he boarded sled dogs and they asked if the dogs were okay. Jason had visited the commune where Tom lived and Tom knew that he was a passionate environmentalist, very upset about drilling in Cook Inlet and in the Beaufort Sea. Tom did not know if he was an activist or just a concerned citizen who loved Alaska as the seemingly last pristine place on the planet and as one of its indigenous people.

Duff got a call back from Mark Harmon after he visited Archie Bower, who bore a striking resemblance to Duckie (who copied who). The murder was done execution style, although, Archie said, probably not by a professional. It seemed that Jason knew his killer because he let him in the house and went back to sitting in front of his computer, facing his visitor. He was shot right away Archie decided, right between the eyes, although not a clean shot and the shooter had to place another bullet near Jason’s heart. Was it done by the actual person who had a beef with Jason or had someone been hired to do this, hard to tell, except for the fact that Jason seemed to know the killer? The dogs had been very upset by the gunshots and were barking and snarling at first. They had all been fed and were calmed by a few kind gestures from men familiar with dogs. Someone had been assigned to look after them temporarily until they could be returned to their owners. He wouldn’t be able to share this with the bakers until after the day’s event ended and he and Lorraine had looked at and tasted four croque-en-bouche constructions. Lorraine knew everything he knew though.

It turns out that Lorraine had been right to worry about repercussions. Just as bakers were putting finishing touches on their sweet delights, four masked people burst into the Bayshore Clubhouse after killing or wounding several guards and staff people who tried to block their entrance. Since the people with masks had guns and the guards did also, they managed to stop one invader at the door, but the other three proceeded as if nothing had happened. So far, they had not shot either the presenters or the bakers.

“We are members of the Fossil Fuel Warriors who fight to make sure that the Alaskan economy continues to benefit from offshore oil and gas drilling. Unless officials stop investigating the death of Jason Jayko and land a helicopter outside this building to fly us wherever we want to go with no questions asked we will kill you one at a time in front of all these cameras,” said the tallest masked figure, obviously male and probably the leader. “You have one hour and keep those cameras rolling. We want to stop these attacks on fossil fuels which are good for Alaska’s economy and world economics. We don’t believe burning fossil fuels causes climate change.”

Each baker, like a parent protecting their child, moved carefully to stand between the terrorists and their beautiful croque-en- bouche pastry constructions. The heated sugar caramelized to hold their pretty pastry towers together worked perfectly for once, nothing sliding out of place, all standing in spun sugar glory waiting for judgment. No baker wanted to offer their hard labor up to a bunch of killers. The killers for their part kept their distance just waving their guns in a terrifying manner that had even Steven St. Michael looking a little pale.

The police soon learned that the bakers on the Great Alaskan Baking Show were being held hostage. They surrounded the Bayshore Clubhouse but there was little they could do. They had techs going through Jason’s computer and they had seen this group mentioned a number of times in various emails and articles that Jason had posted online, but now everyone had that information and they were watching a hostage event against a bunch of bakers live on PBS. Duff has received a call from a staffer who was in an ambulance on the way to a hospital and he told Lorraine what was going on. He saw that she was shaken, and he handed her off to a female staff member who looked ready to assist and confident she could do the right thing. Pretty soon the old British stiff upper lip attitude took over and Lorraine rejoined Duff. Mark Harmon called and told Duff what he was seeing on TV. Duff thanked him for helping and told him he would make him one very special cake when this was all over. Harmon just said, not necessary, and added that he doesn’t eat cake.

An hour is a long time for two groups, one with guns, to just stand around and stare at each other. There had been no communications from outside the event center. One of the masked men got curious about what the bakers had behind their backs. Once they saw those childishly decorated puffed pastry constructions their eyes lit up. One terrorist corralled the bakers and presenters into a tight group in a corner of the room and masks came off as these gun toting killers proceeded to help themselves to one pastry ball after another, gleefully portraying the characters that were the theme of the piece, while keeping their eyes on the guard who had no pastry. Eventually one satisfied terrorist allowed the one guarding the bakers to take his place. The bakers had trouble choosing whether to be scared to death or irate at the destruction of their masterpieces. Now that they had seen the faces of their captors, they figured that they intended to kill them all no matter what.

One captor turned his head towards the roof when he thought he heard a faint sound, but since the sound did not repeat, he decided he was wrong. After gorging themselves on pastry, the terrorists put their masks on once again, apparently unaware that the camera had already captured all their faces without the masks. They were being identified at that very moment. What the terrorists did not know was that there was a trap door on the roof that led into a tiny attic space over the venue. Several sharp shooters were striving to enter that space as quietly as possible with toweling shower caps over their boots that appeared from some mysterious supplier. There were three, two women, one man (women were smaller and lighter), and they were now settled into the space. There was another door that opened into the event room, used to access the lights when they needed changing, and there was an unobtrusive catwalk below the inner door. Each of the shooters set her or himself down carefully on the catwalk which was solid and steady. There were three terrorists and only three shooters which was perfect, and they liked that the terrorists were separated from the bakers and the presenters who were now seated on the floor by Beth McGrath’s kitchen space.

“Now,” signaled the lead shooter on the catwalk and firing commenced immediately. They shot all three men so fast that no terrorist even got off a shot and the bakers started praising the shooters and crying, shaking, and hugging each other amazed that this whole awful standoff had ended so abruptly and successfully.

The doors at the front burst open and the room filled with people, but the bakers looked only for Duff and Lorraine. When they saw Jethro Gibbs, they began to wonder if the whole thing had been an episode of NCIS, but then they realized that the blood on the floor was real and they remembered that Gibbs was not on NCIS right now. Duff explained how Mark Harmon had helped catch the killers and everyone applauded Gibbs and they all went from station to station to taste those desserts as the ambulances removed the terrorists from the room and the camera crew waited to record the verdict about who won the day’s bake. Steven’s clever superhero vanilla flavored concoction won the day, first time he was named star baker and Duff and Lorraine announced that since they had lost Jason, no one would be eliminated today. They agreed to meet at a nearby bar to honor Jason by telling Jason stories. Obviously, bakers aren’t wimps. The show would go on but perhaps the next time would not be live. Who won the whole thing – no surprise, it was Tom Miller. Namaste.