Bake Off's secret superheroes
The woman who washes up 16 hours a day. The artist who sketches every sponge. And the team on standby for a dash to the shops. Meet . . .
The Great British Bake Off is back, beaming ten weeks of cake-filled, comforting television into homes across the country. Now in its seventh series and completely unchanged since the first in 2010, the show is as familiar to its fans as Mary Berry’s floral bomber jacket.
But even the most fanatical followers of Bake Off don’t know everything that goes on inside that famous white tent.
For as well as the faces we see on screen — judges Mary and Paul hollywood, presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins and the contestants — there’s a crew of 50 people working behind the scenes to make the show a success.
From the woman who washes every dirty dish by hand to the staff on standby to sprint to the supermarket, we reveal Bake Off’s backstage heroes . . .
WAITING IN THE WINGS TO BAKE
hOt ovens, sharp knives and the pressure of talking on camera while whipping up a cake . . . it may only be a baking show, but disaster can strike at any moment.
In the first three weeks of each series, crises are averted by having two standby contestants — one male and one female — in case someone is ill or pulls out at the last minute.
the standby bakers go through the audition process and then sit at home in case they’re needed.
ed hallifax, a baker from Brighton, was the series three standby contestant — alongside Frances Quinn, who won series four.
he explains: ‘A producer would call me every Friday [the series is filmed over consecutive weekends from April to June] to check I was available and I had to make sure my phone was charged and with me at all times. I had a bag packed and ready!’
had disaster struck, he would have replaced the drop- out contestant at whatever stage they had got to; they wouldn’t re-film previous episodes.
‘the standbys step in and are as far into the competition as everyone else. that’s why it’s only for the first three episodes — to keep it fair.’
While Frances went on to audition again, ed decided he’d had enough of Bake Off, but says the show inspired him to set up his own company, Mr Bake.
‘the audition process proved I was good at what I loved. It gave me the confidence to push myself.’
WASHING-UP EVERY DISH BY HAND
IF yOu thought the bakers had it hard, spare a thought for Iva Vcelak, whose job is to wash every bowl, spoon and cake tin used — by hand.
Dishwashers are too loud to operate during filming, so Czechborn Iva is stationed at the tent’s two enormous sinks, where she spends up to 16 hours a day scrubbing dirty dishes.
each series requires 1,000 dishcloths, 80 sponges and 30 litres of washing-up liquid — and tireless Iva is thought to have done more than 250 hours of washing-up to date.
‘A dishwasher would be too noisy and take longer,’ a Bake Off insider explains. ‘If you’ve got caramel, you’ve got to use plenty of elbow grease, so a human washer-upper is best.’
MARY BERRY’S MAKE-UP ARTIST
OxFOrDShIre-based Jo Penford is the woman tasked with styling Britain’s most glamorous 81-yearold. She’s done Mary’s hair and make-up since series three, and is also in charge of making Mel, Sue and Paul look their best.
‘I’ll arrive on set at 7am and go straight into make- up,’ Mary explains. ‘I’m always fussing about my hair because it’s as flat as anything. Jo knows to give it a bit of oomph.’
her blonde bouffant does appear more voluminous this year, and experts have suggested that Mary may have had a few small ‘ mediconnects’ — tiny extensions fused to the hair with a polymer band — to give her extra oomph. But discreet Jo refuses to divulge her secrets.
As for make-up, Mary says: ‘I usually only wear a bit of pink lippy, but for tV, Jo adds a few extra [false] lashes to brighten my eyes and colour to my face as I look pale and uninteresting naturally.’
Jo, whose other clients include actresses Sheridan Smith, emilia Fox and Joanna Lumley, also applies mauve eyeshadow and rosy blusher to Mary’s face.
the whole process takes no more than 20 minutes as Mary ‘can’t sit still’ for any longer.
ROAD-TESTING ALL THE RECIPES
the contestants bake all their own cakes, biscuits and desserts on the show, but not without a helping hand from Faenia Moore, 34, the show’s home economist, and her two- woman team of food researchers, Georgia May and Becca Watson.
Not only are they in charge of buying ingredients, but they check each of the contestants’ recipes for quantities and equipment, and do a full run-through of Mary or Paul’s technical bake to ensure it can be done in the time and under the conditions.
‘It’s a case of asking: “have you got enough raspberries?” and “Do you know how the oven works?” ’ Faenia explains.
‘ We run through all the methods so that during filming someone isn’t suddenly looking for a whisk. We want them to be in the best environment to achieve amazing things.’
She insists her role on the show doesn’t amount to cheating.
‘If I see a contestant doing something that I know will go wrong, I just have to turn away,’ she says. ‘I can explain how to use unfamiliar equipment, but in terms of “I’ve split my custard”, they’re completely on their own.’
Faenia and her team work out of a vast preparation kitchen — a separate tent attached to the main tent — where the contestants are never allowed to tread. It contains flour bins, fridges and stores of eggs, butter, sugar and chocolate. A list of technical and showstopper bakes is stuck to the fridge.
A day before filming, Faenia makes up trays of ingredients and utensils for each contestant — usually around 12-20 ingredients per bake (though once it was as many as 124).
Some are hard to track down. ‘A few series back, someone wanted freeze-dried raspberries, so I had to pick them out of a box of Special K one by one,’ reveals Georgia. But it doesn’t always run smoothly. In series one, Faenia found herself jogging round Cornwall asking locals for a 12 in cake tin, and she once had to beg nearby hotels to lend them 42 identically- sized soufflé dishes.
SUPERMARKET SPRINTERS
the bakers can change their mind about what’s in each recipe right up until the start of filming. In case of late additions, a team of ‘food runners’ is positioned outside the nearest big supermarket every morning, ready to receive a shopping list from Faenia and her team.
She explains: ‘I’ll call them and say: “We need more raspberries in ten minutes — go, go, go!” ’
More often than not, the panic is over obscure ingredients that the bakers decide to add at the last minute.
‘Sometimes they’ll be awake in the middle of the night and they’ll have decided that, oh, figs will be the thing that will make their bake,’ Faenia says. Other add-ins have included psyllium (a rare fibre used in bread) and pomegranate molasses ( concentrated syrup made from the fruit juice).
the tills at Waitrose in Newbury, Berkshire — the nearest to the set — will have been ringing very merrily indeed.
Last year’s bakers used 1,600 eggs, 130kg of flour and 150kg of sugar between them.
DAILY OVEN TEST: A VICTORIA SPONGE
the 12 bakers’ ovens are tested every day — by baking a Victoria sponge in each one. A single
batter is prepared and split into 12in cake tins, each of which is marked with the oven they’re going into.
‘We then get a runner to stand at each station with their cake mix so we can be sure they’ve all gone in at the same time and can be properly tested,’ explains Georgia.
A Victoria sponge mix is used as it’s easy to whip up and the light sponge is most prone to being affected by changes in oven temperature or conditions.
One year, they found one of the ovens had been set to ‘defrost’ mode, while another time a baker pulled the oven door off in episode one in a fit of baking pique.
OPENING CREDITS’ GOLDEN GIRL
EAGLE- EYED fans will have noticed the cherub- cheeked, fluffy-haired toddler who appears ten seconds into the opening title sequence of Bake Off.
Dressed in a blue striped smock dress and wearing a mischievous expression, she seems to have ripped a corner of a freshly-baked loaf of bread while her mother’s back is turned. But who is she? Cinematographer Sam Montague and composer Tom Howe, the two men behind the Bake Off credits, are keeping schtum about the golden girl’s identity — though it’s thought she’s the daughter of a crew member, rather than a child model.
Aged two when the series was first broadcast, she’ll be nearly ten years old now — and the woman whose lower half appears in the credits is thought to be her mother.
London-born Tom, 38, composed the Bake Off music after being approached by the director back in 2010.
That familiar ‘ plink-plink-plink’ tune is made up of strings, glockenspiel, piano, guitar, timbales (Latin- style shallow drums) and marimba (a wooden percussion instrument).
Tom explains: ‘They sent me some clips of the show and I tried many things against the picture to see what felt right. I think it works well because it’s feel-good and the instrumentation sounds how I imagine nice, kind people getting excited about baking would sound.
‘The tempo is chosen to be tapyour-foot- like and the Latin percussion with the driving strings gives it a celebratory feel.’
Tom is also responsible for the musical clips played throughout the show, and super-fans can buy a CD — including Bakewell Counting and Ingredients — for £7.99.
BAKERS’ EARLY MORNING DRIVER
TO PREVEnT fraternising, the bakers and judges stay in separate hotels during filming.
At 6.30am, Bob the driver picks the contestants up in the Baker Bus, a 12-person minibus that brings them to the tent for tea and bacon butties, hair and make-up, ready to start filming at 9am.
Mary, Paul, Mel and Sue each have their own driver from local company Meridian Cars newbury.
THE SERIES SHRINK AND CASTING CREW
WITH a record 16,000 applicants vying to get on the show, it takes a shrewd casting crew to whittle that lot down to the final 12.
Anna Beattie, the show’s executive producer, explains that casting is a ‘natural process’, comprising an eight-page application form, telephone interview, face-to-face audition and on-camera technical bake.
She says the producers are looking for people who can bake both bread and cakes, as well as cooking and talking simultaneously. They discard ‘wannabes — people who seem keener on celebrity than on baking’ and try to ‘get a representative mix of Britain’.
Those who make the cut are interviewed and tested by the Bake Off psychologist — a process normally associated with contestants on extreme reality shows such as I’m A Celebrity and Big Brother.
In fact, Bake Off is the first series of its type to ask contestants to complete psychological tests, thought to be scenario-based written and verbal questions, such as: ‘How will you cope with harsh criticism?’ and ‘ How would you respond to a negative headline?’
Paul Hollywood says the tests are necessary to ensure bakers are equipped to ‘cope with the pressure’.
One episode into this series, and the cracks are already showing: we’ve seen tears and cake hurled across the tent.
But even if the contestants bite off more than they can chew, we know the backroom Bake Off team will rise to the occasion.