Classic bread gets rise out of Hollywood
Paul Hollywood loves bread.
That may be obvious to fans of the judge of Netflix’s “The Great British Baking Show,” who is known for his harsh critiques of baked goods, spiky silver hair and patented “Hollywood Handshake” of approval for lucky contestants. But even when the cameras aren’t rolling, Hollywood really, really enjoys talking about bread.
Fresh from filming the new season of “Baking,” or “Bakeoff” as it’s called in the U.K., the judge and accomplished pastry chef was ready to talk all about baking – especially bread – while video calling from his home in Kent in southeast England.
Hollywood waxes on about sourdough, his favorite bread, how “it took me a long time” to get the recipe just right for his new cookbook, “Bake: My Best Ever Recipes for the Classics.” He talks about traveling around the U.S. to learn from famous bakeries including Tartine in San Francisco and Sullivan’s in New York, where he was skeptical about their famous no-knead bread, but then was “stunned by how good it was.” He talks about his preferred, idyllic life of eating daily baguettes for breakfast in Paris.
Bread features prominently in “Bake” (Bloomsbury, 302 pp., out now) Hollywood’s first cookbook in five years, because it’s a distillation of his favorite and most essential recipes. But there also are pies, cakes, desserts and other treats in the book, in which he tries to perfect classic recipes, a project he started noodling with during downtime while filming “Baking” in a pandemic-necessitated bubble.
“We were inside this very nice hotel for seven weeks together. (Co-judge) Prue (Leith) who was writing her book, (co-host) Matt (Lucas) was doing scripts for something and I think the same with (co-host) Noel Fielding,” Hollywood says. “I had all that time after the tent, going back to my room, I thought, ‘I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do another book, right? It’s been five years, it’s about time. I’ve been too lazy.’ ”
So how does Hollywood tinker with recipes as timeless as as blueberry muffins, sandwich bread or beef empanadas?
“Salt levels are reduced, sugar levels are reduced,” he says. “I ended up rewriting a lot of the original recipes and just tweaking them and making them better.”
Hollywood is confident that home bakers will be able to tackle his recipes, even if they look too difficult or complicated on the surface. The recipes are “simple because each stage is simple. It’s just that when you put it all together, you look at it and go, ‘Oh, that’s quite a lot.’”
Through 12 seasons of “Baking” so far (only 10 have been made available in the U.S.), Hollywood has judged baker’s dozens of creations from amateur pastry wizzes from all over the U.K. This year’s season has already wrapped filming, and he says the new contestants are “a great standard of bakers.”
Although the judge, who has become a bigger face on the series over its long run, was more excited to talk about filming the comedy sketch that has come to traditionally open a new season of the show.
“We’ve just done the opening (skit) last week, which is hilarious. I can’t tell you too much about that, but (we’re) very funny.”
Hollywood may be a famous face of the series (he says he was “shocked” by how often he has been recognized in the U.S.), but he doesn’t think he has to be a part of it forever.
“I’d like to see ‘Bakeoff ’ carry on when I’m well and gone. I’d like it to be going on forever,” he says.