The Great British Bake Off Wednesday 8.00pm BBC1 s h o t e x c l u s i v e ly for radio times by
Nicky Johnston
secret of our success
The
They’re our favourite double act, but what have Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood learnt after four years of Bake Off ? And what’s their favourite cake?
Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood examine three cakes made by the show’s home economist Faenia Moore. She’s a brilliant baker — it was our idea to get her to make two dodgy cakes!
our years after she started on The Great British Bake Off, Mary Berry has finally got used to wearing jeans. She admits that her hair and make up are a lot more – shall we say – attended to these days. And people come up to her in supermarkets and show her pictures of their cupcakes. Meanwhile, Paul Hollywood also has a huge fan base, and like her, has got a bit smarter. “No, I haven’t. I am absolutely the same,” says the silver-haired, blue-eyed baker. “Common as muck.” “You are not,” says La Berry, twinkling at him. “You now wear smart shirts with proper collars. And proper cuffs. Don’t you remember, when we first did Bake Off, you used to often appear with those… polo shirts?” she continues, despairingly. “Doesn’t he look lovely now?” She looks at him as one might a naughty child. “Really stylish with your sleeves turned up, and a nice collar. No, he wasn’t like that at first. Now he looks smashing. I have noticed other people doing it like him, and I like it.” Hollywood grins at her. She twinkles back. Of course the chemistry between the comforting home baker from the Home Counties and the rough diamond from the professional kitchen is one of the secrets behind The Great British Bake Off, about to launch into its fifth series, and now upgraded to BBC1. What has changed for the two since the show began? Precious little, they say. It’s still about people baking stuff for Mary and Paul to taste. Except the stuff that is being baked now is really quite spectacular. Just as Berry and Hollywood have scrubbed up somewhat during the past four years, so has the baking public. It’s not fairy cakes and Battenbergs any more. Everything is “laminated” this and “drizzled” that, with ingre-
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RadioTimes 2–8 August 2014
and the winner is…
rosie millard
dients not even heard of when the show began. “I have learnt from the Bake Off,” says Berry, who speaks of the show as if it were a solid object. “Last year I learnt about freeze-dried raspberry powder. Because I don’t research my recipes on the internet, I knew nothing about it. Then I went home and tried it out with my recipes.” She looks at me, perhaps hoping I’m about to go home and try it out myself. “You don’t have the wetness from the raspberry, you see, and there is a very strong powder from freeze-dried raspberries that can run through ice cream. It gives a very intense taste.” I look at Hollywood. Is there anything he has learnt from the show? “Me?” he says, incredulously. “No! I’m a profes-
weights & measures
• 535 blocks of unsalted butter and 74 blocks of salted butter were used by this year’s contestants. Along with… 1,440 large eggs (120 dozen) and 960 medium eggs (80 dozen) 306.5 kg sugar 78.5 litres of milk 80 litres of cream 22 kg chocolate 24.9 kg nuts 24 types of flour 19 types of sugar 600 piping bags and 200 rolls of kitchen paper towel were used during filming 34 — the number of times Paul Hollywood said “overworked” during judging 10 lbs — the average weight gained during the series per crew member
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sional baker. But as a group, the standard has gone up phenomenally this year. Very professional,” he says hastily. “This year they have watched the series. And they have concentrated on their bakes,” says Berry of the 12 contestants. “And not the peripherals. Which is good. We can only judge them on the bake. Not on ribbons or extra sauce, or sprinkles, or things they have made around to create the atmosphere. The bake is the atmosphere and that is what we taste. The viewer can’t, of course, taste, and the taste is very important. And we are the only two people who can describe that.”
absolutely ‘ Itheamsame –
common as muck p a u l h o l ly w o o d
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Four years on, and Berry is as svelte as ever. She shakes her head carelessly as if to say: keeping your shape while tasting up to 36 different bakes a day? Child’s play! “It’s terribly important to taste absolutely every bake properly,” she says. “So you eat very lightly after that, for a day. Just a few salads. And then back to normal eating.” Her slightly more solid counterpart, who has previously admitted that doing Bake Off has had a ruinous effect on his middle, rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well I do marathons all the time. And I love muesli. Can’t you tell?” She gives him a withering look. One thing that hasn’t changed is Berry’s firm enthusiasm for being the doyenne of home cooking. “I am just so lucky because this is doing something I really love. I love the Bake Off, e
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alamy
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the RT interview by
tug of… cake!
The 2014 contestants line up with Mary and Paul
f and now it is just like going back to a family every year, because the team doesn’t change.” So what about the advent of jeans in the Berry wardrobe? “Beforehand I would never have worn them,” she says. “Other than for a dog walk. Then I arrived here, and there were Mel and Sue in jeans and Paul in jeans and I thought, well, I need to be the same as all the others.” Although she also leads the way; a floral bomber jacket from Zara sported by her on the show in 2012 sold out in hours. “It is all very exciting. At home, I don’t really think about what I wear. Now people really notice, and you make more effort. Although I dress for my age,” she says. “I mean, I can’t wear short sleeves like yours because of… what do you call it? Bat wings?” she asks Hollywood. “Bingo wings!” he says drily. Not that she has any. Indeed, she looks remarkably together. Would she ever consider turning back the clock with the help of chemicals? “Botox? No, no!” How about other… work? “No. I think surgeons should be saving lives rather than pulling faces about. But I do think about what I look like now, whereas before I didn’t, unless I was going out to a party.”
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erry and Hollywood. Even their names go rather happily together, like ice cream in the manner of Baskin and Robbins or Ben and Jerry. They think one reason for the show’s success is its fundamental honesty. Good old baking, judged in a marquee by two people who have been cooking for so long that they probably can’t remember a time when they couldn’t separate an egg. “We get no pressure from the BBC to say, ‘We need someone from Scotland to win’. Nobody does that,” says Berry, firmly. “We make the decisions.” She pauses. “I often look at other cooking programmes and it doesn’t seem that way.” Their work for the latest series has just finished. The contestants have already baked and their produce has been tasted. Can they say what their favourite concoction was? “It was the cake baked on the very first programme,” admits Berry. “A cherry cake. People are terrified of cherry cake and we had it as the technical challenge. We got very different results.” Hollywood, as ever, is a bit more down to earth. “I did like the Swiss roll. Because when I was a kid that’s what we had. With custard.” “With custard?” says Berry. “Yep. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you have poured custard over Swiss roll,” enthuses Hollywood. Berry looks as if she might be quite hard to convince. “How disgusting. A cold Swiss roll? With hot custard?” “Absolutely.” Mary Berry shakes her head. They walk off together to have their photograph taken. It’s a winning combination. Check out Bake Off’s new sister show, An Extra Slice, presented by Jo Brand, on Fridays at 9pm on BBC2
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Spilling 1
“It is a huge process for us to get to the final 12 contestants,” admits executive producer Anna Beattie. Last year 16,000 contestants were whittled down by means of a lengthy application form, an interview, auditions and a baking screen test. “We usually have two standbys, just in case someone pulls out at the last minute or is ill. But only for the first show or two. Then we are up and running.”
they all get a briefing from the manufacturer and I am always there on set to help them. Because it’s not very exciting if they can’t turn the oven on.”
home, and cutting, and talking to camera, I have to say, “Please watch your fingers”. Last year it was carnage, but this year it’s been injury-free.”
“We have new knives every year, and the knives are… good,” says Moore. “If they are nervous and used to using crummy knives at
On filming days a runner is stationed at the nearest big supermarket in case contestants make any last-minute amendments to their recipes.
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In the first year the show moved from place to place every week. This year the tent was pitched in April at Welford Park in Berkshire for ten weeks. “We try to record at weekends, because so many of our contestants have day jobs,” says Beattie. “They arrive, go into the tent, and bake for Mary and Paul. That’s it.” Each episode is filmed over two days.
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“The bakers don’t mess up very often with our kitchens,” says Bake Off home economist Faenia Moore. “I think last year someone put the oven on Defrost instead of Cook. But
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“It is really important that the bakers actually have a chance to taste what they have been slaving over for the three or four hours,” explains Moore. “So I put together a basket of all their different bakes so they can taste their own and everyone else’s. Then, in a very orderly fashion, of course, the crew dig in — they really love it when the bakers cook something savoury as there is usually so much sugar around.”
Before the series begins the ovens are checked: a dozen Victoria sponge mixes are prepared and placed into each oven at exactly the same time by members of the production crew.
Never the twain shall meet? The judges keep a professional distance from the contestants and stay nearby but in separate hotels — to prevent fraternising.
the beans
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Unusual ingredients this year include freeze-dried berries, edible flowers, paneer cheese, praline paste, mango powder, raw cacao, popping candy and pistachio paste.
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Before ‘Bake Off
I would never have worn jeans
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m a r y b e rr y
“We record the entire series before transmission,” says Beattie. “Of course, we then have to keep the winner a secret until the series ends. It is a risk, because it relies on everyone involved playing ball, but we trust people not to spoil it. The crucial thing is to make all the noise and publicity around the show nothing to do with the show itself.”
Who picks the bakers? Who eats the cakes?
hidden stars the brains behind the show Anna Beattie executive producer
the fixer faenia moore home economist
When we first cast the show, we knew we wanted a man and a woman to judge it. And we knew we wanted to have Mary. We tried her out with different pairings until we met Paul. It was obvious straightaway that they were a strong combination. We loved the fact that Mary was a home baker and Paul a specialist. We got bakers to come in with things that they had baked and Mary and Paul just cut open their cakes, and immediately they had different things to say, and lots to say about them. We were filming it on a little camera, but we wanted our bakers to ignore that. And the amazing thing was that from day one, the bakers were so interested in what Mary and Paul had to say that they forgot about the camera. Our format hasn’t changed in the move from BBC2 to BBC1. There are just tweaks, which hopefully no one will ever notice.
If our bakers want rose petals from Kensington or cheese from Devon, we will get it for them. I come equipped with duct tape and a marker pen so I can blank out the product name, since there must be no advertising in the show. Bakers can bring ingredients and equipment, too: they like using their own things, like their favourite spatula. This year, the volume of equipment they brought in was staggering. Some of them used those giant things that builders use to carry their hammers. With cable ties, on a granny trolley. It’s difficult to keep tabs on it all, so this year we had to install a system. At the end of every day the lovely washer-upper puts our clean stuff on a table, and there is another table for the bakers’ clean stuff. Then they have to take it all back to their rooms. Otherwise it is too much of a responsibility, looking after all these personal items. Can I tell who will win? No. But you can tell what is going on in their head. If they lose confidence they will not be going on to the next round.
the washer upper IVA VCELAK Iva Vcelak is “the lovely washer upper” who has the task of cleaning every spatula and cake bowl by hand; when filming is going on, dishwashers are too noisy. This year she went through 1,000 cloths, 80 sponges and 30 litres of washing-up liquid, and clocked up 160 hours at the Bake Off sink. We asked for an interview but unsurprisingly she’s taking a long break!
one she made earlier…
Faenia with one of the cakes she made for RT’s photo shoot
richard osman’s bake off ode: page 33 e
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