Great British Bake Off star Amanda Georgiou has spoken of the huge amounts of money bakers dish out while appearing on the show.
The former contestant – who appeared on the 2021 series and was eliminated in week six – said she had hundreds of eggs and a huge selection of ingredients, as well as pots, pans and expensive tins in reserve so she could reach her full potential while filming, while speaking out about the behind-the-scenes secrets.
On the process she told Johnny Seifert on Secure The Insecure Podcast: ‘You all spend a lot of money. I would go to the supermarket and I would always buy probably at least 10 boxes of eggs. I’d always have over 100 eggs. In the end I stopped putting things in my cupboard.
Big effort: Great British Bake Off star Amanda Georgiou has spoken of the huge amounts of money bakers dish out while appearing on the show
‘I had great big tubs of flour… had all my baking powders out and all my syrups and all the bits and pieces you need for baking.
‘It is it is a lot of money but they cover that for you. They do help you out with your ingredients. They don’t just expect you to pay for it all yourself.
‘They give us all a set amount and it’s not just the ingredients we bought, we took all our own tins and everything with us because you would couldn’t guarantee they would have the tin you want so, I was buying font tins. The font tins alone were £50.
Ready for action: The former contestant – who appeared on the 2021 series – said she had hundreds of eggs and a huge selection of ingredients
‘I’ve now got a garage full of baked good where before my garage was full of lawnmowers and gardening tools. My husband is not very happy with me.’
We have a few weeks, I think it was about five or six weeks (to prepare). We got all the briefings so we knew which week was cake week, biscuit week, bread week, dessert week, German week and so on.
It’s not just bread, it’s got to be a theme so they tell you what the theme is and then you start writing your recipes. It’s really hard work especially when you’re trying to do your full-time job as well.
Competition: Amanda, who was voted out in the sixth week of last year’s series, also had pots, pans and expensive tins in reserve so she could reach her full potential while filming
You have deadlines, where you still have have to submit your two recipes for each week.
If it was bread week for instance, you have your signature bread bake and then you have your showstopper for the bread week. For instance, I did my sea bed theme when I had the octopus and it was sized practising that.
But you have to write your recipes as well and they have to be your own original recipe, you can’t copy Mary Berry’s or Hollywood’s recipe. You send your recipe off and they’ll say, “No, you’ve got to rewrite that one. You can’t use that one, it’s too similar to someone else’s.”‘
Speaking out: On the process she told Johnny Seifert on Secure The Insecure Podcast : ‘I would go to the supermarket and I would always buy probably at least 10 boxes of eggs’
Meanwhile, Amanda revealed the huge effort she put in to the application form and the follow up calls from the production team and baking technicians.
She explained: ‘It’s what your hobbies are, what things you like to bake, what things you hate to bake, what are you good at what you’re not good at.
They want you to send in photos as well, it’s not just an application form they want to see, they want to see at least five photos of different styles of baking. That’s a minimum, I think I sent up about 20 photos,
The application takes you forever to fill that in. Then you wait for a phone call, which you may or may not get. The phone call is almost like a quiz, to spend an hour talking to someone who knows everything about baking, asking lots of questions to see if you actually are as knowledgeable as you’ve said on your application.
Comeback: The Great British Bake Off returned to screens on Tuesday for its 13th series, with 4.4 million viewers tuning in
Because you know what it’s like when you fill out an application for a job or anything, we all exaggerate a bit that we say, “Yeah, I got all these A stars. And I’m brilliant at this. And I’m brilliant at that.”
So if you’re not as good as you say they will work it out and you won’t get another phone call. So you need to get through that technical quiz first before you go any further.
They might ask you what sort of things make your cake go flat, if you open the oven too early, if you whip up too much air into it, if it rises and then drops very quick. There’s so many reasons.
You need to understand why things go wrong to be a good baker because you need to make sure you don’t do it again.’
The Great British Bake Off returned to screens on Channel 4 on Tuesday for its 13th series, with 4.4 million viewers tuning in.
The Great British Bake Off continues on Tuesday at 8pm on Channel 4.
Entertainment: The Great British Bake Off continues on Tuesday at 8pm on Channel 4 (Amanda pictured left)
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