Cake! And pies! As if there were ever a better project for me to work on. 120 delicious recipes, 120 delicious photographs, well over 120 delicious mouthfuls of baked gluttony. Brilliant.
Working on The Great British Book of Baking was full of highs – and not all sugar-induced ones. As well as the photo shoots for the recipes, which were fun for obvious reasons (although there were several sticky moments: ovens catching on fire, sunken sponge cakes and the perils of icing on a very hot day), we were lucky enough to tour the country with the team behind the BBC TV series The Great British Bake Off. Along their trail of crumbs we met the admirable men and women whose lives are dedicated to keeping strong our great British baking heritage. To talk to people whose schedules revolve around the very art of tea and cake was a complete and utter sugar-coated joy.
For me, a definite high point – in more ways than one - was meeting a real-life miller at one of the few surviving commercial windmills left in Kent. He took us up into the cap (that’s milling lingo) at the top of the mill to see the sails turning. The land around the mill was used in the Second World War for housing prisoners of war, and you can still see their graffiti up on the walls. We watched the route of the grains from the top of the mill to the flour sacks at the bottom – and I even bought a few bags to make some loaves of bread at home – which were excellent by the way.
Being backstage during filming felt like being let in on a secret. It was the first time I’d been on a film shoot and it felt like spying to look through the cameras, zooming in on secret moments of contemplation and occasional despair. The editing process for programmes like this must be a complete nightmare; there must have been weeks’ worth of footage from dozens of cameras for every episode. It was great talking to each of the contestants and watch how their characters developed throughout the series – and witnessing how they reacted when things got a little bit too hot in the kitchen, or their cake fell out of the oven. Oh, I’ve got plenty of stories I could tell you… Although, actually, I don’t. That was the lovely surprise – they were all just so genuinely lovely. Even the crew were lovely. But then I suppose how can you be in a bad mood when you can smell freshly baked chocolate cakes all day?
But how can I talk about The Great British Bake Off without mentioning Saint Mary Berry and Sir Paul (Hollywood)? Mary really is as kind and, well, also as lovely, as you hope she is. You just want her to give you a big hug and produce a freshly made cherry cake. Somehow everything would be alright after ten minutes and a cup of tea with Mary. She’s just the person you’d want to be there when you’ve dropped icing sugar all over yourself or your pastry topping has holes in it. And Paul is the kind of man you’ll believe when he says he likes your rolls. Together they are Baking Superheroes; there’s literally nothing they couldn’t create with a few pounds of butter and some lightly sieved flour.
For the pages of the book, we photographed each contestant holding their freshly made bakes. We did this on-set immediately before the judging. This was when I held my breath and willed each contestant not to drop their plates of biscuits or even a single raisin. The director actually said he’d kill us if any of them did. I’m pretty sure he was joking, but I wasn’t about to mess with him and his crumbcam (a tiny – but probably deadly – camera that he used to identify tiny crumbs that might have gone astray).
The Great British Book of Baking was turned around in about three and a half months. It was a pretty full-on three and a half months during which I lived and breathed (and ate) baking. I even spent my birthday on location, although sadly it was biscuits week so there were no birthday cakes around. And I dreamt baking – well, jostling baking trays actually and the aforementioned oven on fire. Working on TV tie-in books is always very much an all rather than a nothing experience and by the end of it, even I had to take a short break from baked goods (but don’t worry, I’m back on it now).
Despite the long days, the weekends spent in strange kitchens around the country, the burning fear that maybe we wouldn’t actually get it all done in time, the one moment that has come to sum up my memory of the whole project is warm and satisfying: it was the last day of filming, it was the day England were going to be playing in the World Cup, we were in Mousehole harbour watching the fishing boats coming in and out, the sun was shining and we were having a quick ice-cream break. I’d just learned about stargazey pie from a local lady and heard Mel being heckled by a man and his daughter. Suddenly, the oven-timer ping went off in my head and I knew we’d come to the end of our baking journey. And that warm and gooey moment, several weeks in the making, is captured on page four. Perfect. Now, who’s for a cup of tea? I highly recommend the macaroons.
Laura Herring, Illustrated Books Manager
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