Kneader in a haystack
Bake Off Paul to grow his own wheat
PAUL Hollywood is used to sorting the wheat from the chaff on Great British Bake Off – but now he’s set to grow his own grain for his famous bread recipes.
He explained: “I have got a bit of land and I am going to start growing my own wheat and make the flour. I have got 12 acres. There is a well there that I can tap into.”
But don’t expect Paul, 56, to do the same as former Top Gear presenter Jeremy
Clarkson, whose Diddly Squat Farm in Chipping Norton featured on Amazon Prime hit show Clarkson’s Farm. “I do not want to get it filmed,” vowed Paul, from Kent. “I just want to do it for me.” He returns to Channel 4’s Bake
Off alongside fellow judge Prue Leith, 82, and hosts Noel Fielding, 49, and Matt Lucas, 48, next month.
“You need to be very brave to do Bake Off as you have to come in front of Prue and myself and be timed,” said Paul.
“The timing is the hardest part to deal with. It takes a lot of bottle to go into that tent and bake. It is incredible to watch them turn from amateurs to professionals. I used to be involved with the auditions, but now we can get 20,000 people auditioning and I can’t eat that much cake. So I wait until I see them in the tent.”
When contestants produce their showstoppers, Paul says he takes great joy in destroying their masterpieces. “I cut everything,” he joked. “It is like a machete. I don’t care. I like to see them wince. Our job is to get in there and sometimes their flavours are in the middle.”
No wonder Paul is like Marmite. “Someone once said they did not like the way I say ‘moist’,” he said. “I’ve made sure I now say it every show.”