How Does Paul Hollywood Dunk His Cookies?

The Sporkful

On The Great British Bake Off, Paul Hollywood is known for his tough but fair judgments, his piercing blue eyes, and his handshake, which he offers to a contestant only when they really impress him. But before he was ever a TV judge, he was a baker. When he first started doing TV appearances, it was nothing more than “icing on the cake” of his baking career. But all that changed when he got the call from Bake Off. Paul tells Dan about apprenticing in his father’s bakery, how his famous handshake has evolved over the seasons, and why he has an uncomfortable relationship with fame.     

Paul Hollywood’s latest cookbook is Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round. Sign up for our newsletter by November 3 for a chance to win a copy of the book! Open to U.S. and Canada entrants only. 

The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O’Hara, Kameel Stanley, and Jared O'Connell.

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2025-10-20 43 min

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