Dylan Bachelet, a 20-year-old finalist on season 12 of The Great British Baking Show (which is known as The Great British Bake Off outside the United States), made an impact on fans, judges, and co-hosts alike for his good looks and excellent flavors. He was truly learning as he went through the challenges, but there was one tool that helped him throughout and continues to serve him well in his career as a chef: the Thermapen ONE, which also happens to be a Wirecutter pick. Here, Dylan tells us about why it was so good that he needed to take it from the set.
My favorite part of feeding people is having them understand my thought process behind my flavors and ingredients, and it has to be perfect for that to happen. With the honey, lemon, and ginger entremet cake I made for Bake Off, I knew exactly how I wanted it to taste: the lemon to be super sour, the mousse to be airy and cloudlike and very mild, and the ginger to be very earthy. It was all there in my head, and then when judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith ate it and tasted it exactly as I had intended, it was so satisfying.
I’ve been cooking and baking my whole life, but I’m still gaining technical skills. For me, Bake Off was a lot of crude learning in a short period of time. I’ll remake a recipe 10, 15 times until I get it exactly how I want it.
My best mate on the show, Sumayah Kazi, taught me about checking the temperature of baked goods. On the first day of filming, I was talking about our mini Battenberg cakes, and she said, “I hope it bakes in time.” I was like, “Yeah, well, I’ll just stick a skewer in to see if it’s baked.” And she goes, “Oh, you still use a skewer?” And I was like, “Yeah. You stick the skewer in and hope it comes out clean.” And she said, “No, no. That’s so primitive. Like a caveman.”
She’s right. So many times, you stick the skewer in, and it comes out clean, and your cake still isn’t baked. It’s mucked up. Or the skewer is bone-dry, and you eat the cake, and it’s like a brick.
Sumayah taught me to take the temperature of the cake and pull it out at 98 °C. It’s so perfect. I have an objective measure of quality. I’m never going to have an underbaked or overbaked cake again.
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I bought a knockoff Thermapen on Amazon because Thermapens are quite expensive. When I was in the baking tent during show filming, I got different temperature readings between the fake one and the Thermapen, and I was, like, “Well, I trust the Thermapen more.” So I took it home to practice with, and then I ended up taking, like, two more from set because, well, why not? I’m not going to get the chance to get these again, like Gill Howard grabbing the violet bowl after the quarterfinal.
A lot of times in cooking, you can go off eye and feel. So many people can make great things without these tools. My grandma does not measure anything. She does everything by taste, and it’s all fantastic.
But if you want consistency—and I like to bake as if it’s a scientific method—using the Thermapen is the easiest way to do it. If I’m making things 100 times, I can’t keep track of my taste anymore after the 12th time. I’ll have my control of the things I’m not going to change, and then I have a few things that I will change about the recipe. If it tastes better or worse than the last time I made it, I know exactly what was responsible for those changes. A temperature change in caramel, for example, makes it a bit more bitter or a bit darker. During Patisserie Week, Gill even said I’d be doing something fancy with thermometers, which was spot-on.
The other thermometers I’ve used claim to be instant-read thermometers, but they’re really not instant. You put them in the baked good, and while they do give you a temperature back instantly, it’s not always the right temperature. I’ll poke it in, and it will start at one temperature, and then after 30 seconds, it’ll fluctuate greatly. That’s because the probe itself is heating up with the bake.
Thermapens are truly instant-read. They’re really sensitive and responsive, so you don’t have to wait. You just pop it in, and you get an accurate temperature reading.
I’m now working 60-hour weeks as a chef de partie at the Michelin-starred restaurant The Five Fields in London, and I used them a lot for frying. On the way home from work one night, I fell asleep on the Tube, and I woke up at 5 a.m., and my chef bag was gone. All of my chef knives were in there—two of my nicest knives—and my Thermapens. I am so upset, and I’m hoping to replace them soon. Though I guess it’s pretty ironic that they got stolen from me.
This article was edited by Maxine Builder.
