Tag: new yorker

An insightful essay about the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to get into the Great British Bake Off.

During the next couple of months, I inched closer to the show. I cleared interviews with home economists who quizzed me on the finer points of baking technique—how to tell when a meringue was done cooking, or how to get a thin, shattering crust on a loaf of bread. Next were screen tests, a first date with the camera. Toward the end, in-person baking trials. These days, it’s not until the thousands of applicants have been whittled to a final hundred that anyone even tastes the bakes. “The best amateur bakers in the country” is the line, although I get the sense that even the producers don’t fully buy this. Throughout the process, we were encouraged to practice, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, to get up to speed with things outside the amateur repertoire of biscuits and cakes. If any of us were truly skilled at baking, it was often because we had sought out “Bake Off,” not the other way around.