Andrei Godoroja: Where Are They Now?

Spoiler note: this post confirms that Andrei Godoroja won his season of The Great Canadian Baking Show.

Every baking show eventually casts a renaissance man, and The Great Canadian Baking Show found its best one in season 2. Andrei Godoroja, a 58-year-old software engineering consultant from Vancouver, won the 2018 season while also being, per his own billing, an opera singer, a sailor, and a skier. His Instagram handle says it all: andreibakersailorsingerskier. Here is where the years since took him.

The season 2 win

Godoroja took the title in the November 2018 finale, the last season with the original hosting pair of Dan Levy and Julia Chan and judges Bruno Feldeisen and Rochelle Adonis. At 58 he was proof the tent rewards decades of quiet home baking as readily as youthful ambition, and CBC's finale coverage made much of his calm, methodical style. He remains one of the older winners in the full run of Great Canadian Baking Show champions.

Baking for good causes

Godoroja did not spin the win into a bakery or a book deal, and by all public evidence never intended to. He kept his day job in software, where he is a co-owner of his company, and used the baking title mostly in the ways a genuinely nice person would: he headlined an online baking fundraiser covered by Global News in 2021, appeared on baking podcasts like Baking Scraps to talk shop, and was featured by a Vancouver workwear company for, delightfully, his apron.

Back to the tent

In November 2023, CBC brought Godoroja back for The Great Canadian Baking Show holiday special, where he baked alongside other past winners and Star Bakers from the show's history. For fans of the early seasons it was a welcome check-in: same steady hands, a few more years of practice.

Where things stand now

Godoroja's public footprint since the special has been light, which fits the pattern of most Canadian winners: the title folded into a full life rather than replacing it. He is, as far as the public record shows, still in Vancouver, still in software, still baking, and presumably still sailing, singing, and skiing as advertised. Not every champion needs a media empire; some just need a bigger trophy shelf.

The takeaway for fans

Season 2 is a great early-era watch, and Godoroja's run is the argument for the show's founding premise: that the best baker in the tent might be a consultant in his late fifties who does it purely for love. If you are working through the winners chronologically, he is the bridge between the show's scrappy first season and the more polished era that followed.