British Baker editor, Martyn Leek blogs this weeks Bake Off episode- and explains why the bakers dozen might not cut the bread in the hard working baking industry. 

I have a confession. I don’t watch The Great British Bake Off when it airs live on television. I catch up later when I can via the iPlayer and, yes, I skip through the bits I don’t need to watch for my job.

It is an entertainment talent show. Produced and edited to delight the nation. A nation that, at the time of the show’s inception, was going through the biggest post-war recession and quite frankly needed cheering up.

It bears no relation to the baking that I see up and down the country. And this year’s “controversy” merely illustrates why it’s this year’s X Factor, but with more Cath Kidston.

The fact the baked Alaska fiasco of Iain Waters has made the headlines for two days in a row only confirms that the media, of which I belong, I know, has entered silly season.

Did he storm off? Was it sabotage by fellow contestant Diana Beard? She too, has now walked off set because of illness we are told by the producers. I don’t know, and perhaps by penning this blog I am contributing to the hype of publicity.

However I do know this: bakers do not quit. They do not throw their goods in the bin and storm off. Ok, they might hurl an offending item occasionally. They then start again. They weigh their ingredients, mix and continue. Like the song eat, sleep, rave, repeat they simply eat, sleep, bake, repeat.

I dread to think what fellow British Baker blogger David Smart, president of the Craft Bakers’ Association, thinks of it all.

And that is why we should treat GBBO for what it is. Great publicity, a bit of fun and that is why the baking industry will carry on. Eat, sleep, bake, repeat.