Nine of America's elite professional bakers gather to begin the first in a series of fourteen Skills and Master Challenges designed to test the limits of their baking mastery. Host Scott Conant announces that in the first Skills Challenge the bakers are tasked with baking perfect Petit Fours. In the Master Challenge the bakers must create a mind-bending cake for fifty people using vanilla as the featured flavor. After judging and deliberation with judges Jason Smith, Marcela Valladolid and guest judge Gemma Stafford, one baker is eliminated.