Sirius XM Podcasts That's good chocolate.
That's really good chocolate.
You can smell it.
It's the slight maltiness to it as well.
Paul cracked the chocolate cookie in half and has the interior a half a millimetre from his nose.
I'm going to have to try and dunk that.
See, that's holding.
It's holding well.
He dunked into the tea.
That's holding.
That's like a marine.
Okay.
Oh, that worked.
There's a lot of chocolate in there.
Wow.
Is there such a thing as too much chocolate?
I didn't, I would have thought so, but not in this.
But that's delicious.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
And before we get to the show, I want to let you all know that registration for my 2026 pasta tour in Italy is now open.
This year's tour, 2025 edition, sold out months in advance.
So get on it.
Come eat pasta and so much more with me in Italy.
All the details are at culinarybackstreets.com slash sporkful.
All right, let's get to the show.
This week I'm talking with Paul Hollywood, a longtime judge on The Great British Bake Off, the massively popular show that's known here in the US as The Great British Baking Show.
Same show, just different name.
When Great British Bake Off premiered on the BBC 15 years ago, there were plenty of skeptics.
A show featuring amateur bakers competing?
Who would watch that when there were already so many competition shows out there with pros?
One of the program's creators was told the concept would be as exciting as watching paint dry.
But against all odds, the show has become an international phenomenon and made stars out of its judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood.
Paul is known for his tough-but-fair judging, his piercing blue eyes and his handshake, which he offers to a contestant only when they really impress him.
As you'll hear, Paul's expertise is well-earned.
He's been a baker his whole life, apprenticing under his father, who was also a baker.
And Paul's written a number of cookbooks, including his latest.
Celebrate joyful baking all year round.
In an earlier book entitled Bake, he started a section on cookies by writing quote I can assure you that all the cookies in this chapter fully stand up to the dunk test.
Obviously, being British, I drink tea.
I like to have a mug of tea.
I say mug, it's more like bucket.
And when I get a cookie, I should be able to put my cookie into the warm tea and hold it for at least five seconds, lift it and it shouldn't collapse.
You're saying five seconds and no crumbs?
No crumbs, nothing.
It shouldn't because it holds together with the liquid.
If it's got a lot of butter in there, then as soon as you put it in it evaporates and the whole thing goes to the bottom.
Because the butter turns soft.
Yeah, and then you end up there's a panic which I've never felt before where you dive for a spoon to grab the cookie that's sitting right at the bottom of your mug of tea.
I love a good dunk, but I have the issue you're describing, which is I get crumbs everywhere.
In the tier coffee.
Wrong cookie.
But the chocolate chip cookie I had brought him, the one he sniffed with delight, was definitely the right cookie for dunking.
I got it at Bread's Bakery in New York, near our studio.
We were dunking the cookies into tea in the British way, but I wanted to see what Paul thought about an American spin on the dunk test.
I would love to have you also try dunking it in milk and tell me what you think of that.
Milk?
Because chocolate chip cookie into milk is a pretty classic American thing.
Warm milk or cold milk?
Cold milk.
He's dunked into the milk.
Very similar.
But you want the warmth of the tea.
Oh.
That's what gives you that.
In Denmark, they call it hygge.
Hygge is where you feel, I suppose it's akin to a hug.
It's like a coziness.
Yeah, it's coziness.
It's when the fire's on open fire and it's winter and you're sitting there cuddling with a cup of tea watching your best program.
Have you ever seen Frozen the musical, which I gather you haven't.
No.
But I have with my daughters, and there's a whole song called hygge.
Right, okay.
Okay.
That's exactly where it comes from.
Yeah, okay.
That works.
Prefer it in the tea.
Prefer it in the tea, but you're okay with it in the milk.
But it got the milk.
Okay.
Do you want to try also an Oreo?
Have you ever dunked an Oreo?
Oh, yeah, go on.
All right.
I add Oreos.
I like Oreos.
Yeah.
They're fairly new in the UK.
Yeah.
I'd say five years, ten years.
Can I pitch you on an Oreo technique?
Are you actually twisting it and separating it?
Yeah, we do that with our vanilla custards.
Right.
So I like to twist it, separate it.
Then take the blank chocolate cookie, the one that has no cream on it, put it under the other cookie.
Okay.
So now the cream side is facing up and you have two cookies underneath.
Yeah.
Now flip it upside down so the cream side is going to land on your tongue when you take a bite.
Yeah, but why?
Because you taste the cream better.
Go on, try it.
Take one bite.
Tell me what you think.
Okay.
It's a whole different experience.
Yeah, it does change it a little bit.
I don't get it, but I...
As I said, baking has always been a part of Paul's life.
When he was born, the family lived in an apartment upstairs from his dad's bakery.
His father specialized in sausage rolls and savory baked goods.
They moved when Paul was little, but stayed in the area around Liverpool.
Growing up it was my dad coming in from work normally first thing on a Saturday morning.
Been working all night.
And I remember getting covered in flour when I ran up and gave him a hug when I was a kid.
Same thing happened with my kid when I was growing back from work.
My son used to run up and give me a hug, and he'd get coated in flour.
I suppose it's been passed down, but I think baking.
I remember my dad making bread rolls and rising them in front of our gas fire.
And it was a slow, proven trying to lift up these little, these tea towels, to look underneath this dough, seeing it grow, mysteriously grow and go.
What's going on?
I didn't understand what's going on.
But they tasted amazing when he baked them.
The smell was incredible.
But it sounds like even if you didn't understand what was going on, you were curious.
Oh, yeah.
There was definitely a curiosity there.
As a kid, Paul was also exposed to baking in other ways.
Church events featured all the British classics, and there was TV.
He used to watch a show with his dad called Generation Game.
Basically it's like you get four teams.
Normally family father and daughter, or mother and son or whatever.
And they get set a challenge where they used to get this baker come on and they do piping or plaiting or braiding or whatever.
And they had to produce what he did.
So an expert demonstrates something.
Could be a dance routine or a craft or some kind of baking.
And then the family that are the contestants has to replicate it.
It's a family show, Saturday evening.
Huge figures, 30 million people used to watch it.
Thank you very much indeed.
Good evening, ladies, gentlemen and children.
Welcome to another edition and a new edition of The Generation Gay.
Nice to see you again.
To see you again.
Lovely, and you know it's so.
I grew up on that and it was just a fantastic thing to watch, very much a family program which i think bake off is that now, and i think it's it's still one of those family shows that if you're five or 95 can still watch.
When you were watching it as a kid, there was a moment that a baker came on.
So you're six or seven years old and so what are you thinking?
Watching that on tv?
I was.
I was curious because, looking at my dad going, can you do that?
So Paul was interested in baking long before he could do it.
But when he got into his teens he started helping out at his dad's shop on Saturdays to earn a bit of money.
He learned some lessons very quickly.
The lads used to deliberately burn me.
So they'd say, oh, pass me that tray over there.
I'd go over and just grab the tray which had just come out of the oven and literally be scalded.
Third-degree burns.
My dad would often lose it then and say, what are you doing to my son?
But in the end, I learned very quickly to tap a tray before I picked it up.
And that stuck with me for a long time.
Even today, if I'm in a bakery, I tap a tray before I lift it.
That's literal trial by fire.
Working there as a teen, Paul learned a lot, not only about baking, but also about running a business.
His dad set up the place so customers could watch the baker's work and see things being baked.
To add a personal touch.
This became one of the bakery's calling cards when Paul's dad expanded, eventually opening locations across northeast England.
And so for me, watching my dad do well... and ended up with a nice big house.
And I remember when I was young, my mum and dad divorced, but my dad had a Rolls Royce.
I'm watching my dad going, my dad's a baker and he drives a Rolls Royce.
How does that work?
Maybe I'll get into baking.
Interesting.
I might do that myself.
But at the time, Paul put aside ideas of baking, instead enrolling in art school, following more in his mother's footsteps.
She was a graphic designer.
I look like, I mean, I was called JC in art school because I had blue eyes and long hair.
Oh, like Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I was JC.
I'd stubble.
I was a bit of a hippie.
So my mom sort of grew up in the 60s.
I used to wear caftans, you know.
So I used to go in like two pairs of jeans with Zosa and Zeppelin all over my trousers.
And there was a caftan, then a Wrangler jacket and then a black velvet blazer over that, with bands in my long hair at the time.
I mean, I thought I looked cool.
I mean, I look like I like Burke.
But it was one of those things which, you know, at the time it was...
That's what I was into in art school.
What did you like about art school?
I think it was the time you could spend on a piece of art.
I might spend months on a piece of art, certainly if I was doing sculpture.
And I'd be building up the armature.
I used to do a lot of horses in clay and then get them cast for my exam.
Loved it, though.
And then...
You made a switch.
What prompted that?
Money.
And I think I prostituted myself to my industry from that age.
My dad approached me and said, get your hair cut, son.
Come and join the industry and I'll pay you 500 quid.
Now, 500 quid back in the early 80s was a fair whack of money.
It wasn't nothing.
No.
And I thought, OK.
So literally, I went from long hair to shaved hair overnight.
But I had 500 pounds in my pocket.
LAUGHTER
Maggie Thatcher was in power at the time.
And I remember watching the news, all these people, especially in my area in Liverpool, everyone needed a trade.
That was not a good time economically in England.
It was bad.
And if you had a trade, you had a job.
You had a job, you had money.
And that was critical in the 80s.
So for me to go off and learn a trade from my dad, then that's great, because no matter where I go in the rest of my life, I have a trade.
I am a baker and I could go and earn money somewhere.
By the time Paul was in his early 20s, he was managing one of his dad's bakeries.
But after six years with his dad, he moved on, baking at several prestigious hotels in London.
His reputation grew quickly.
I was offered jobs in Miami.
I was offered jobs in New York.
I was offered jobs in the Mediterranean.
And then I was poached by the foreign minister of Cyprus, Mr Mikaelidis, and he approached me to say would you like a job in Cyprus?
And I thought, okay.
So I flew across for a three-day interview, two of which I was so blind, drunk I don't remember, because the Cypriots were so.
They brought me in and we went out for a drink and literally they just gave me all this souvenir which I know it was like 80 proof.
It was like fire water.
And this thing just wiped me out.
And I'd set up all this bacon to show the bosses what I could do.
The next day I could barely walk, let alone see.
So in the end, I managed to crawl into work later on that day and set everything up.
Had a meeting the next day.
They offered me the job.
And in the end, what originally was going to be a year contract ended up being six.
And I just fell in love with Cyprus.
And you traveled around the Middle East.
It sounds like that was also like exposure to different cultures, different cuisines, different types of baking.
Yeah, I fell in love.
I did a lot of traveling.
So I went to Jordan.
I went to Syria.
I went to Egypt, Israel.
Jordan, I found amazing.
I thought Jordan was incredible.
Petra and Amman.
How did those travels influence your baking?
Oh, huge amounts.
I mean, if you look at the Middle East, if you look at certainly from Jordan, Israel and going out to Iran Iraq, you look at the flatbreads that have been around for a long time.
The first risen breads were in Egypt because they were the invaders, not the invadies.
So they were in one place.
They never got invaded.
So they could build these huge ovens and grow the first sourdough.
So history is bread, and I found that fascinating.
And it was also in Cyprus that you got your first television opportunity.
I did, yeah.
How did that happen?
I was working in the hotel and the FB director came on and said they're doing some filming with the chef today, an English company.
They'd like you to be involved.
And I went, right, okay.
So I did some filming with them.
They said, you're really good on television.
You should do something when you go back to the UK.
And I went, well, I've got no intention of going back to the UK.
And they said, well, maybe you should.
Okay.
So I thought about it.
And then they gave me a business card.
And in the end, I thought, I'll go back.
Paul returned to the UK and launched the Paul Hollywood Artisan Bread Company, which supplied bread to high-end retail stores like Harrods.
In 2005, he published his first book, 100 Great Breads.
It won a bunch of awards and was published in 10 countries.
Around this time.
He also became a regular on British TV, stopping by shows to bake something, promoting his bakeries and cookbooks.
Someone said that I would lionize a screen, whichever that, whatever that was, that I had the X factor, which was something that people were looking for.
I didn't know what they were looking for.
I was just trying to be myself.
I was always told, be yourself on camera.
And that way, when you're doing your TV work, there's no mask to slip because it's you.
And so the whole idea was to try and be as natural as possible, which is what I've always tried to do.
That brings up a question I wanted to ask you.
So, like during that period, as your career's taking off, your cookbook's taking off, you're opening your businesses, your career's growing.
How were you thinking of TV?
Were you thinking, like, this is a way to promote my bakeries and my cookbooks?
Or were you thinking, like, this might actually be where my career's headed?
No, it was the cream on the cake.
The cake was the business.
It was just a bit of cream on the top, which is fine.
You think, well, this is running for pretty easy stuff, you know.
I had no idea it could turn into a cake.
And I think...
One of the hardest parts for me with the business was, I think, when I was running the business.
It was very difficult for me to keep in the business while I was still working.
I've spoken to a lot of guys like Jamie Oliver and other people who've been through a similar thing.
When you have a business which...
It's your bakery, but you have to spend so much time away either writing or filming.
You're never going to be able to get down to do your main job because you're away all the time.
And when you're away, your staff are not there with any leadership.
So in the end, I gave it all up and then started doing more television.
But that again was, it's like monkey barring.
You have to let go of one to grab the other.
It's a really difficult thing to do because it's about trust and knowledge in your own ability.
And it was a nervous time for me.
That's actually a really interesting analogy, the monkey bars, right?
Because I've had those situations in my own career that you have something that feels stable.
Yeah.
You got a good grip on one bar.
Yeah.
And you see the next bar up, but you're kind of like, but I got a really good grip on this one.
And it's scary.
It's dangerous.
It's scary to reach for the next bar.
There's benefits.
Yeah.
Right, but there are risks.
But there are big risks, yeah.
And I think when I took the plunge, it took about, I would say, about six months for it to find its feet before I felt comfortable with the fact that am I earning enough money here?
You know, am I going to be okay?
Because you're relying solely on something you have no real control of.
It's like opportunities from other people.
Yeah.
Opportunities from publishers, opportunities from television producers.
Essentially, I'm working for other people again.
Right.
Whereas before I was working for myself.
Now I'm reliant on people going, your commission for another year, your commission for six months.
And you're living day by day, which before it was my business.
I ran it.
It was up to me what happened.
And that took a bit of thought to get to that process, you know.
So Paul was all in on TV and was going pretty well.
Then he received a pitch for a very unusual new show in development.
They were talking about this thing in a tent.
I was working with an old lady.
Their words.
And I said, old lady.
And straight away I said, is that Mary Berry?
And they went, what?
How did you, what?
And I said, well, I haven't met her before.
And then he went, oh, please keep it quiet.
That's coming up.
Stick around.
Time to cook up some advertisements.
Welcome back to The Sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman.
And if you are a great British Bake Off fan, make sure you check out this past Friday's reheat featuring former Bake Off champ Nadia Hussain.
We had a great conversation.
You're going to love this one.
And for our episode last Monday I spoke with Rosie Grant, who just published a new cookbook called To Die For a cookbook of gravestone recipes.
Yes, gravestone recipes.
They're basically what they sound like.
Gravestones, like in a cemetery, that have recipes written on them instead of or in addition to a standard epitaph.
Rosie has been collecting gravestone recipes from across the country for years now.
She's gotten a sense of what kinds of recipes are most popular.
I've heard before that cookies are pretty simple in instructions, and so it fits quite nicely onto a gravestone.
You know, you only have so many characters, you only have so much space.
It's also expensive, like per character, if you're paying that way.
It adds up very quickly.
Is that how you pay for headstones?
It's like per character?
It depends on your area when you're, you know, buying a headstone.
So some places you just pay for the space, but in some places you are paying per letter.
So there's an actual character limit on the headstones.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like a tweet.
Rosie explains why this project is so meaningful to her, and we talk with someone who put her mom's cookie recipe on her headstone.
Then we find a woman who put a recipe on her own headstone, and we talk to her.
Ooh, spooky.
That episode's up now.
Check it out.
Finally, make sure you stay tuned all the way to the end of this episode for a very special bonus segment brought to you by the National Pork Board.
All right, back to Paul Hollywood, whose new cookbook is Celebrate Joyful Baking All Year Round.
When we left off, he had been approached about being on some yet unnamed baking show that would take place outside under a tent.
Paul was skeptical, but he auditioned for the producers.
They turned up with two bags of baked stuff in my house, in my kitchen, tipped it onto the side and said judge these.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, just tell us what you think of it.
I went, that's awful.
That texture is terrible.
What is that?
That is what?
I wouldn't give that to my dog.
And then I went through everything else.
And then he said, that's brilliant.
We're going to go.
And I thought, another producer wasting my time.
But turns out, it wasn't a waste of time.
Paul went to London for a screen test and after some more waiting and winnowing down, he got the gig as a judge on Great British Bake Off.
His fellow judge would be Mary Berry, an esteemed English baker and TV host.
The comedy duo of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins would co-host.
And I went, great.
Have you actually got this commission?
And he went, yes.
And we started filming in two months.
So I went, in a tent?
Yeah.
Yes, you're crazy.
Okay, this is going to be fun.
And that's how it all started.
What were you thinking the first time you saw the tent?
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
I was looking for a trapeze because I thought it was like some sort of weird circus.
And I turned, it was a cold, cold day.
I drove up there and we were staying in a hotel just down the way and caught up with Mel and Sue.
And I was just having a drink, a cup of tea with Mary.
And I said, what do you think?
She goes, oh, it's freezing.
I said, I'm not sure how this is going to work, you know.
The weather did eventually warm up, and after a few episodes, everything started coming together.
We had an indication, I think, from the fourth program we were filming from the editors to say that the program is cutting really well and it's really good.
And we were going, okay, this is unusual.
We could be onto something.
As they soon learned, they were onto something.
The show climbed from 2 million viewers in its first season to 11 million in year six.
People tuned in for the genteel English countryside.
The bakers, with their charming backstories and the quirky and unique bakes they made every week.
Viewers were especially taken with how nice the bakers were to each other, offering a hand or a tip to fellow bakers they were supposed to be competing with.
But is the show really all so nice?
Former Bake Off contestant Ruby Tando wrote a story just a few weeks ago about her experience on the show.
I do want to read this quote to you to get your take.
Ruby Tando, who was a contestant who did quite well on the show back in 2013.
I think she made it to the final round, I believe.
That's right.
Yeah, she did.
She wrote a piece just recently in The New Yorker.
I saw it.
Oh, you did?
I did.
Okay.
But one of the things she said that I'm curious to ask about.
She wrote no show does so much to hide its true nature, namely that it's a competition people desperately want to win.
Yeah, that's true.
This is the essential hypocrisy of Bake Off, and it remains the most British thing about it.
Bake Off is what it is.
It's a very gentle, it's a very nice program, but it's a competition.
It's a competition.
And if you want to win, you have to do well.
You can be nice and do well, and you can be horrible and do well.
Because I don't care what personality you are.
What I care about is what's on the plate.
And so there lies the competition.
It's not the people, it's actually the bake itself is important to me.
I did think it's interesting the way she says that this is something very British.
Because I lived in London for a time.
I, of course, wouldn't pretend to know British culture as well as you do.
But there is something sort of puritanical in the culture that I think sort of says that like striving is somehow uncouth.
I think, yeah.
I think Americans celebrate success more than the Brits do.
On Bake Off, the main goal each episode is to win star baker for the week.
But there is a distinction a baker can earn that's even more prestigious.
They can get a handshake from Paul for an especially good bake.
Now, these handshakes are extremely rare.
Bakers and viewers obsess over who gets them and when.
Paul explains how it started.
I gave someone a handshake because I thought they did an amazing job.
And it was a genuine, well done, that is impressive.
And then I did it again, maybe the following year or later.
And then people started noticing it.
And that's where it started, really, quite innocently.
Right.
But then over the years, perhaps inadvertently, the number of handshakes increased.
And there were like whole think pieces, all this hand wringing of the number of Paul's handshakes that's going up.
He's devalued his own handshake.
I mean I get people, builders coming into my house who are doing work on the telephone lines or in the electric or whatever.
And they open the door and they go, nice to meet you.
And the hand's out.
Right.
And I go, where's my cake?
Right.
I can't shake your hand unless I've got a cake.
Well, I gave you a chocolate chip cookie.
Maybe I'll get a handshake at the end.
I do think that the thing is about the handshake, it's sort of grown into this huge monster.
I don't, I'm quite sparing with them now, to be honest.
Did you scale back in response to people saying that it was Well?
No, I scaled back because the problem is every year the bakers got better and better.
And therefore, the handshakes are going to get more and more.
So what I've done over the couple of years is reset the bar and said, right, that's the bar now.
And then, sure enough, one or two has jumped over the top and gone brilliant.
It's also increasingly, I gather, a challenge that the bakers know your personal taste.
They know what you like, so they can kind of try to...
For sure.
I'd do exactly the same thing.
I like citrus.
I like key lime pie.
If you make me a key lime pie and it's a good one, you're probably going to do really well.
But I wonder though, because those are your favorites and because you have probably had more of them in your life, it could go the opposite way, which is that you have higher standards for key lime pie.
There's the risk.
But to be honest, you'll probably do well.
Just don't give me matcha.
I'm not that keen on matcha.
So I have to disassociate myself from my taste buds briefly.
How do you deal with it when you encounter less familiar ingredients?
Less familiar I like because I'm testing myself and I want to see what it tastes like.
I want a bit of history.
Teach me.
Show me.
I'm always open to learning different things.
Last year, Dylan made gochujang and garlic buns.
And you and Prue were not familiar with gochujang.
That's right.
Which, to be honest, was a little bit surprising to me, because that's an ingredient, at least here in the US, well beyond Korean restaurants, which is, of course, where it comes from.
I live pretty far out in the suburbs.
And probably five years ago, I was at a food truck run by an Italian-American guy named Tony and he was serving fried chicken sandwiches with gochujang.
Yeah.
So it's far beyond, it's not like a trendy, upscale ingredient.
It would have been for us in the UK, though.
So I live in the middle of nowhere in Kent.
So no, there's no way I was going to come across that flavor.
And again, if there's a lot of Korean restaurants, which have started happening in the UK now...
It's all to do with the amount of Korean restaurants you have and Korean influences in the area.
If I was to go to a Korean part of London, then I would have hit it before, but I just hadn't been there, so therefore I hadn't seen it.
There was a piece in Vulture here in the US that suggested that the show should add one more judge who maybe is someone who has experience with some of the flavors and ingredients that you and Prue don't have.
What are your thoughts on that?
Again, as I said before, that's got nothing to do with my idea of flavor and what I do or don't like.
A bake is a bake that's a good bake.
Whether the flavor comes through or not is a factual thing.
Whether I like it or not is completely different.
That's a way.
For me.
I'm judging what's on the plate and what it looks like, and is the flavor that they're saying in there in there?
If it is, then it is.
Whether I identify it or not is immaterial.
It's how it looks and how it tastes.
And for the record, Dylan got a handshake for his gochujang and garlic buns.
And there have been other bakes over the years with ingredients Paul doesn't love but that he gave high marks to anyway.
I mean, I'm not a massive fan of tofu.
However, there's only one person on this world that got a handshake because of their tofu, and that was David Schwimmer.
Sometimes celebrities come on the show to raise money for a cause.
David Schwimmer came out a couple years ago to raise money for cancer research.
I am making a vegetable and tofu curry pot pie.
My daughter enjoys a plant-based diet, so this is really for her.
He came on the show.
I made a tofu curry pie, which is one of the best things I've eaten for a long time.
I had to give him a handshake.
He burst into tears.
I almost burst into tears because it was that good.
Come on.
I've never had tofu that I've enjoyed before.
Wow.
That is a fantastic pie.
Made my year.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
One of the byproducts of your success, and especially the success of Bake Off, is that you become a big celebrity, which is a strange thing.
I think it's funny that I think that people who aren't famous assume that being famous must be the greatest.
And obviously it has its perks.
I don't know if you ever got that Rolls Royce, but there are some perks to it.
But it's not all sunshine.
No, it's not.
And I think I'm friends with Nick Mason, who's the drummer of Pink Floyd.
And I've had many a drink with Nick in the middle of the night and a couple of beers.
He would say he had the best job in the world.
He was in one of the biggest rock bands in the world.
And yet nobody knew him.
And so he would be at the back playing the drums and in the money with the rest of the guys from Floyd.
And yet he could walk down the street, walk down to the shops and not many people recognize him.
And it's still the case now.
And so that's the best job in the world.
I think the benefits obviously financially are there.
The fame side of things.
I didn't know that it would be so intrusive and everything about your life is probed.
Would I have done it?
No, I probably wouldn't have done.
Because I think everyone's entitled to a private life.
And I do think America is slightly different to the UK.
The tabloids in the UK are brutal.
And I think the tabloids over in the US aren't quite as brutal.
I think they do appreciate that people do have some form of private life.
I read that you had to give up cycling.
Because the paparazzi were hounding you.
I didn't want to get photographed in Lycra.
I mean, that's all it was.
I didn't want to get photographed in Lycra.
My bike, however quick it is, I could never get away from it for a car.
But there is a solution to that, Paul.
Just take one picture of yourself in Lycra, release it publicly and then now the paparazzi can't make any money off a picture of Paul in Lycra.
I used to go out on the motorbike a lot because I could wear a black black visor and disappear helmet on.
But I fly as well.
I fly helicopters and I've been learning how to fly for a few years now and I thoroughly enjoy that.
So there are benefits to what I do and to be able to to fly like as I do now.
I just love it.
You know, love it.
So if I could go back to Paul 20 years ago and say like you're gonna have all this success, you're gonna make a good bit of money, but the trade-off is that you're gonna be it's gonna be hard for you to walk down the street in the UK yeah, you would say, I'll pass, I'll pass, Yeah.
Couldn't you still walk away now?
Or is the cat out of the bag?
The cat's out of the bag, isn't it?
I mean in 10 years' time, someone will walk past me and say oh, isn't that the guy who used to do Baker from 10 years ago?
So it's always there.
You know the image of me getting old on telly for the last 16 years when my hair was darker and now I look like Gandalf.
So I can't do anything about that.
When he's not on TV or flying helicopters, Paul is still baking and writing cookbooks.
His new one is Celebrate Joyful Baking All Year Round.
It's a collection of recipes for special occasions and gatherings grouped by season.
Asparagus, feta tart for spring, strawberry scones for summer, apple donuts and rich chocolate confections for the colder months.
Now, I'm more of a cook than a baker.
One of the things that I struggle with when I'm going to bake something for a celebration, for some kind of gathering, is how far in advance to make it.
Because I want it to be fresh, but you don't necessarily want to cover something if it's still warm.
How do you think about timing when you're thinking about a bake that you're going to bring somewhere?
The day before is perfectly acceptable to make a cake and finish it.
Pastry...
Ideally you want to make the pastry the morning or the day before.
You can prepare like a puff pastry.
The next morning, you can wrap and bake it so it's fresh and warm and crispy.
But you can reheat these.
So again, you can reheat a lot of this.
Cooking, you have to do there and then, but baking, you can prepare.
So there's plenty of time to scope, of allowing a time and a timetable to be fulfilled, so you're not rushing at the end.
While I don't bake much, there's one baked good in particular that I spend a lot of time some might say too much time thinking about.
You obviously, over the years, have done an infinite number of tray bakes, as you would call them, which we call bars.
Anything cooked kind of in a square rectangular pan and then cut into squares.
You have cherry marble cake bars in this book.
I love bars.
I especially love ones that have kind of like a...
A firmer bottom, like a graham cracker crust perhaps, and then something sort of more gooey on top?
Yes, yeah.
Is your favorite piece of bar or tray bake?
One from the center, one from the edge or one from the corner?
And why?
It depends.
I tend to go for the corner because...
If there's chocolate in there, it's a rocky road or anything like that, it tends to lip up.
So there's more chocolate in the corner pieces than there are in the middle pieces.
If it's a millionaire shortbread or something like akin to that, I'll go for the middle one.
So I tend to cut myself something slightly bigger out the side rather than the corner.
Corner for chocolate, everything else middle.
So it depends on kind of the ratios of the ingredients.
Yes, it depends on what I like on the top of it.
Right.
That's a good answer.
For me.
I don't know that it's as much about the ingredients, but I will inspect the different options.
Yeah, great.
If the topping is going all the way to the corner, then I would also want the corner, because I want that crispy edge that's inside the pan.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But sometimes they're made where the topping doesn't make it all the way to the corner.
And so then your corner piece is going to just kind of be very bready and without so much topping.
And then I would probably go for an edge because I still want some edge.
Or pea saladier, which I've got in the book as well, which is basically onions, it's olives, it's delicious anchovies and it's just stunning.
But again, I always go for the middle one of that because you're encouraging more anchovies and onions in there.
And there's lots of flavor with the olive tapenade as well.
So I tend to go for the middle one because there's more filling on it there.
Another recipe in the book, Hollywood hot dogs.
Oh, yeah.
These are hot dogs wrapped in like a bun.
It's your savory bun recipe.
Yeah, it's wrapped in dough.
Right.
Which is essentially what a hot dog is, because normally you have to make a hole or slice and put the frankfurt or the sausage in it and have your mustard and everything else on top of it and you eat it.
What a Hollywood hot dog is, is basically something I did a while ago.
I revisited for this book because I thought, I really like that idea.
How am I going to write this?
So the best thing to do is pick your favorite sausage, cook it three quarters of the way through.
Then basically what you do is you make a basic white dough.
Roll it out and then place your sausage on the dough all the way along.
And then cut little triangles from them.
And then fill that with your onion, a bit of mustard, ketchup, whatever.
And then roll the things up like a petit pain, like a roll.
And then seal it.
I'm sure the French must love that analogy.
Oh, yeah.
Just seal the ends and seal the base and just roll it so it's nice and neat.
And then leave that to prove for about half an hour and then bake it off.
But you glaze it with a bit of egg wash.
And it looks like a normal, you know, sub.
Looks like just a normal sub.
But after 10 minutes of it being out, bite into it.
You have a hot dog with everything it's sealed inside and it's still warm and it tastes delicious because you have a fresh bread as well.
And it's also one of the things I would imagine you get with that.
That you don't get with a traditional hot dog bun is that you get a little bit of a crisp on the exterior of the bread.
So you get that variation in texture.
You get a crispy exterior.
Then you get the soft, doughy interior of the bread.
Then you hit the meat and you get the pop of the skin of the hot dog and then the juice.
I mean, that's like a multi-level experience.
Absolutely.
You should have got you to write this bit.
That sounds great.
I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.
Paul, as we sit here, you've been baking almost your whole life.
You've been around baking.
You've been baking since you were very young.
You're now in your late 50s.
So like it's nearly a half century.
So you're about to turn 60.
So almost a half century of baking.
Do you still love it?
I do.
I think the day I stopped loving it is the day I stopped doing what I do.
I love it so much because I live in a very, I mean, it's a world that is crazy.
It's very quiet in my life, actually, away from the tents.
I just spend time with my wife, nice and quiet.
And I love it.
You know, I live in the middle of nowhere.
I walk the cats everywhere.
They're massive.
And I just love my quiet life.
And when I go to work, my work is in a tent where I eat some of the most amazing things and meet the most amazing bakers with a great team.
And so I'm very lucky.
I'd never thought it would take me to this though all my life.
I mean, but again, I still love going to work.
And when I do go to work in April...
It's always a little bit chilly.
And I always spend about 10 minutes with just me in the tent.
So I walk from my sort of changing area and I walk towards the tent.
There's normally no one around about half six in the morning.
I normally just sit there leaning against the tree, just looking at the tent, just saying hello to my friend again because I've known it for so long.
That's Paul Hollywood of The Great British Bake Off, a.k.a.
The Great British Baking Show.
His new cookbook is Celebrate Joyful Baking All Year Round.
It's out now.
Get it wherever books are sold.
And get this.
If you want to win a copy of Celebrate, sign up for our newsletter by November 3rd.
We're giving away one copy of the book to one of our newsletter subscribers.
And remember that if you are a subscriber to our newsletter, you will be entered into all of our giveaways.
So get on the list.
If you don't win this time, you might win next time.
Sign up now at sporkful.com slash newsletter.
If you're already a subscriber, you're already entered.
You must be in the U.S. or Canada to win.
Next week on the show, another legendary baker and cookbook author, Dori Greenspan.
I got to go to her house and watch her in action as she tests a new cookie recipe.
It is a fascinating window into the process of a person that everyone says is one of the best recipe writers anywhere.
If you're getting ready to bake some cookies this holiday season, this episode is for you.
While you wait for that one, make sure you check out last week's show, where I talk with Rosie Grant, whose new cookbook is To Die For a cookbook of gravestone recipes.
Plus, we'll hear from someone who put a recipe on her own gravestone.
How is that possible?
Listen to find out.
That one's up now.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
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And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
This episode was produced by me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
It was edited by Camille Stanley.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
And our intern is Morgan Johnson.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
I'm Sarah from Newcastle, UK.
And I'm reminding you to eat better, eat more, and eat more better.
This segment is brought to you by the National Pork Board.
Taste what pork can do.
All right, Jimmy, what are we making?
We are making tangy grilled baby back ribs.
I'm with my friend, Chef Jimmy Chinnis.
He owns two restaurants I love in Greenlawn, New York Swallow Kitchen and Cocktails and Lucello Pizza and Italian Fair.
Today, I came over to his house to cook up some ribs.
A lot of people think of ribs, they think of a smoker.
What's the key to making good ribs on the grill?
You want to get them to about 180 degrees, but you want to do that over a slow period of time.
So we're going to cook them about low to medium heat on the grill and keep watching them, flipping them, moving them around.
Then we'll start basting them for the last 15 minutes.
And you think that's going to get them nice and sticky and golden?
Nice and sticky and delicious.
Yeah, they're going to be really, really good.
Oh, man, I can't wait.
I can't wait either.
All right, we're about to get them on the grill for a few hours, but first we're just going to salt and pepper them to get our first layer of flavor on them.
Look at that chef-y salt sprinkle.
This is like some Salt Bae level right here.
You want me to do it?
These are nice big cracked peppercorns right here.
Just simple salt and fresh cracked pepper.
I'm going to get them right on the grill.
Oh, that's so pretty.
Let's listen for a minute just to the sizzle.
Oh, that's nice.
While the ribs do their thing on the grill, Jimmy and I hang out in the kitchen exchanging poignant memories.
Ribs are probably the first pork that I fell in love with.
I remember eating baby back ribs when we would visit my grandmother in Florida.
It was a restaurant we'd always go to.
What makes this cut so good?
Anytime meat's near the bone like that, you're going to get tons of flavor.
These are closer to the spine, too.
These are baby back ribs, so they're smaller, so they're going to be tender.
There's so much flavor packed in between those bones.
That was my first introduction to pork as well, ribs.
Love them.
I want you to go back in time.
I want to talk to little Jimmy.
Tell me about that first love, that first taste of ribs.
Tell me.
They were sticky.
My parents were begging me to try it, and I was saying, no, no, no, I'm not eating that.
They gave me a rib.
Love at first bite, baby.
That pork was so luscious.
It was tender, and I was hooked ever since.
Every so often, Jimmy heads back to the grill to check on our beloved creation.
So you're flipping the ribs.
How often are you going to flip them?
Yeah, we're going to flip them every 10 minutes until they reach about 170 to 180 degrees internally.
I cannot wait.
While the ribs tenderize, Jimmy mixes up a sauce to brush on them when they're almost done.
We got the recipe from the Pork Board website.
Okay, so we have some low-fat French dressing.
It's about a cup.
And we have our onion soup mix.
Add about two tablespoons of that.
About two tablespoons of honey too.
And next we're going to add some low sodium soy sauce.
So this is going to be sweet.
It's going to be salty.
A little umami from that soy.
And it'll caramelize nice too from the sugars in the soy.
So we're going to add it just the last 15 minutes of grilling.
We'll lather that on the ribs.
Let's go out and sauce them up.
At this point, the ribs have been on the grill for nearly two hours.
Oh, man, we just came out.
These ribs have undergone a transformation since the last time I saw them.
They are sizzling.
They are juicy.
They are just perfectly brown.
How much time till these ribs are done, Jimmy?
I'm going to say another 15 minutes.
So we're putting the sauce on.
We don't want to go too heavy at first.
We're going to just keep building layers.
So one little brush per.
You don't put all the sauce on right away?
You know, you want to build those levels of flavor.
So once this kind of bakes into it and dries out, it'll concentrate the flavor.
And then we'll just keep adding on top of that.
Look how good those look, huh?
All right, we're rocking here.
Once the ribs are done, Jimmy brings them back into the kitchen to cut them up.
Wow, they're hot.
Want a taste?
Oh, yes.
Oh, man.
It's so good.
So soft and tender.
A little bit sticky sweet.
Just like you said, the sauce caramelized so nicely, but also just a little bit tangy.
Perfect.
Oh, those ribs were so good.
I mean, is there anything pork can't do?
Of course, bacon and pepperoni and sausage are great.
But what about pork chops, pork shoulder, or a good old-fashioned baked ham?
The same rich, savory goodness you love from bacon is actually available for a million more meal occasions in a million more ways.
You want a flavorful upgrade for Taco Tuesday?
Pulled pork carnitas.
And as you just heard, that cookout gets a lot juicier with tangy grilled ribs.
What about guanciale?
You need guanciale to make carbonara.
Pork can give you sweet, salty, acidic, umami.
It literally does it all.
Pork is here.
Grill it, bake it, braise it, roast it, or sear it.
But whatever you do, just make sure you taste it.
Head to tastewhatporkcando.com to discover all the incredible flavors in every bite of pork.
