At least for the time being, Paul’s foray into the world of TV cookery seemed to have been put on the backburner. Although he had enjoyed a limited amount of success, his TV career didn’t appear to have taken off in the way that he might have hoped. But there was nothing untoward about that: many cooks try to make the transition from the kitchen counter to the TV screen without half as much success even at this early stage. At least he now had an agent who would doubtless be keeping a keen eye out for future commissions. Indeed a steady trickle of TV projects would be coming his way over the next few years. While he certainly didn’t make the transition to being a widely recognised TV star until The Great British Bake Off came into his life some years later, he would often make smaller appearances on TV shows and appear in the occasional series talking about his love of bread and baking. On top of that, he had also found a lifelong friend in James Martin.
Of course, most important of all, he and Alexandra were enjoying what seemed to be an almost perfect life in Kent and had been blessed with a baby boy. After years in Cyprus they had finally put down roots. But now Paul was looking for the next challenge.
It was then that he came upon a business idea that would, if it went to plan, see him use his innate passion and love of bakery in a way that would also net him a vast sum of money. He would start his own bakery business. Not only would Paul be his own boss for the first time in his career, but the financial rewards could also be lucrative. A successful baking firm had the potential to sell to businesses across the UK, and if that went well he could build on his reputation and even expand globally, if he so desired. Perhaps he had looked to his father for inspiration. After all, John had turned a single bakery shop in the Wirral into a profitable and much-respected business, with shops all over England. If his father could do it, so could he.
Paul was looking to produce something special. The focus would be on his one true love – bread. But it would be a special type of bread bakery: high-end ‘artisan bread’. It would be a bakery that would sell all types of different bread, but the focus would be to make it a little more high-end. To the untrained eye, it might be difficult to tell the difference between sourdough and focaccia. But to an artisan bread maker – and consumer – it was these subtleties that made the products stand apart from regular, run-of-the-mill loaves.
One website describes the essence of artisan bread. ‘Artisan bread is best described by thinking about the person who makes the bread,’ says ArtisanBread.com. ‘An artisan baker is a craftsperson who is trained to the highest ability to mix, ferment, shape and bake a hand-crafted loaf of bread. They understand the science behind the chemical reactions of the ingredients and know how to provide the best environment for the bread to develop.’ Put simply, it seems the bread is baked with a little more attention to detail; with tender loving care and an understanding of the processes using the highest-quality ingredients.
The creation of artisan bread was a special process. It was a craft – something that could be learned in detail and understood as a scientific process, not just something to be done haphazardly or produced in bulk. ‘A baker’s work parallels that of jewellers, glass blowers or furniture makers,’ the website continues. ‘They all have a palette of preferred, trustworthy materials. They know how to combine their materials to build something strong and at the same time delicate or elegant. Combining the raw materials in different ways will create various shapes, textures or colours. The finished product is something to be proud of when so much thought and creativity went into it.’
The dexterity required to make an artisan loaf was something a keen master baker such as Paul appreciated and understood. For him baking wasn’t so much a job as a passion and a way of life.
But how can the casual eye spot the difference between artisan and everyday bread? One starting point is the ingredients used. ‘There shouldn’t be anything in bread besides flour, water, salt and yeast,’ says ArtisanBread.com. ‘If the bread is made with a sourdough there may not even be yeast in the ingredients. Flavoured breads may list other recognisable ingredients like nuts, garlic, herbs or cheese. A viennoiserie bread, for example a brioche, will include milk, butter and/or eggs. All of the ingredients should sound like familiar foods. Remember you are buying one of the oldest most basic foods there is. It wasn’t necessary to add chemicals to bread for centuries and it still isn’t.’
But it’s not just the ingredients that determine whether or not the bread is artisan. The process by which it has been baked must also be taken into account. This includes the location where it has been baked – artisan bread cannot be mass-produced in a factory and needs tending meticulously in a small, controlled environment where individual attention is bestowed on each and every loaf, which has its own unique, irregular shape. This may sound slightly over the top, but that’s the lengths an artisan baker has to go to! ‘Next think about the place that the bread was made,’ Artisan Bread.com continues. ‘In a small artisan bakery the baker will often show you around. If the bread is made in a large factory you might not get past the front gate. An artisan bakery is small enough that it is possible to train each worker to understand the whole process of making the bread and to make small enough batches for one or two people to manage.’
And it’s fair to say that for Paul the concept of artisan bread had enormous appeal. Baking was never something that he had got into to manufacture baked goods. Remember, his first experience of baking was in the family kitchen, helping his mother to make ginger biscuits. The attention to detail and the precision of each individual bake was so important to him. It’s why he would later become such a meticulous judge on The Great British Bake Off.
And now he wanted to turn his love of baking into a business opportunity. His idea was to deliver high-quality bread to some of the biggest firms around the country. There seemed to be a growing taste for pricier, more high-end bread – something he saw as a unique opportunity to capitalise on. And so in 2007 the Artisan Bread Company was born. He set about building the business from scratch, basing it near the family home in Aylesham, Kent. Unfortunately, he soon came across a snag.
After he decided to name his business the Artisan Bread Company (which many would agree is a good name because it does exactly what it says on the tin), Paul revealed that he had to go through some legal formalities to ensure his own name, Hollywood, was on the patent. It seemed to make perfect sense – after all, his reputation was rapidly growing. However, it seemed there was a completely unforeseen setback. When Paul’s lawyer tried to get the name patented, another Hollywood attempted to block it. Not another person called Hollywood, not even another business named Hollywood, but the LA neighbourhood of Hollywood in the United States of America! It was a turn of events that no one could have predicted.
Paul explained the astonishing, if somewhat hilarious, predicament he had found himself in to the Daily Mail. ‘Hollywood stole my name,’ he told the interviewer. ‘When I was patenting my company about ten years ago I got a letter from lawyers for the City of West Hollywood, California. They thought I was trying to nab their business.’ Surely this was a David and Goliath situation? Paul’s business would be relatively tiny in comparison to the Californian Hollywood of movie studios, endless blue skies and upscale shopping. Or perhaps lawyers for the city of Hollywood had already tasted Paul’s bread and were predicting great things?
Either way, he eventually won the battle. ‘My patent lawyer was a very good one, and he pointed out to them that the family name has been around considerably longer than America has,’ Paul told the Daily Mail. ‘“If you can prove otherwise,” [the lawyer] said, “then my client will back down.”’ But despite winning the dispute, Paul’s lawyer couldn’t resist one last, playful dig. ‘They surrendered,’ said Paul. ‘Then for fun, he sent a letter saying, “I hear you have my client’s name on a mountain. Can you take that down?”’
With the dispute resolved, Paul could focus on the task at hand: baking great bread. But like all start-ups, it wasn’t easy to begin with. There were tough times and he really had to put in the legwork to ensure his business was making a decent bottom line in the crucial first years. ‘I have gone through some bad times with my own business,’ he told the Radio Times. ‘At one point I was working my socks off, driving, delivering, baking. It was hard, hard work. But I worked through it. Running your own bakery is hard.’
Eventually he was forced to cut costs and call on his loyal family for financial support. ‘I never came close to bankruptcy but I had to cut back on staff,’ he admitted. ‘And when I needed equipment, I was fortunate to have family who were prepared to put their hands in their pockets. I was good at what I did and they believed in me. I stuck to it, because I didn’t want to lose what I had. And I never give up.’
Gradually the business started to go from strength to strength. Paul developed the fledgling company into a well-respected brand that was making good profits and supplying big chains such as Waitrose. In an interview with the consumer trade magazine The Grocer in 2011, he revealed that the Artisan Bread Company was making upwards of 1,000 loaves every day. The turnover was £350,000 and he admitted that he wanted to double that figure over the coming two years. These were impressive figures – and even more impressive projections – considering how tough it had been to begin with.
But like everything in his career, it seemed when Paul put his mind to something, he always managed to master it. Naturally, his family were impressed by his success. Paul told the Radio Times: ‘My mum is very proud of me.’
So after a tough start, it seemed the Artisan Bread Company was making excellent progress. Orders were flying in and business was booming. Paul was well and truly in the dough – literally and metaphorically!
And with the business going as well as it was, he decided that it was time to take his bread making to a whole new level. The company specialised in artisan products, but now, in 2009, Paul wished to redefine the boundaries. He came up with an idea that would set his business apart from any other artisan bakery: the recipe for what is believed to be the most expensive loaf of bread ever sold in Britain.
Costing a pricey £15 a loaf, Paul’s Roquefort and almond sourdough loaf really set him apart. It cost more than ten times the price of an ordinary loaf of supermarket bread. Sourdough is widely considered one of the most expensive and, indeed, tasty of breads. The dough is fermented using naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeasts rather than the cultivated yeasts used in regular bread. As the name suggests, sourdough tends to have a mildly sour taste because of the lactic acid produced by the lactobacilli.
On top of the sourdough itself, he was careful to use only the finest ingredients. Only the best Roquefort cheese was used – purchased and imported from a producer in rural France who charged an eye-watering £15 per kilo. Meanwhile, the flour used to make the sourdough was sourced from a specialist miller in Wiltshire. No expense was spared in the creation of this loaf.
As a result of all this, Paul needed to target a group of shoppers who had that extra spending power. An expensive loaf like this needed an expensive shop. And what better place than Harrods, the upmarket store located in London’s Knightsbridge? The establishment had a long-standing reputation for being the preserve of the most elite of shoppers and would be the perfect outlet.
With his keen eye for business, Paul made sure the loaf was available in time for Christmas, so as to capitalise on those shoppers who were willing to spend that little extra for the festive season. By then Britain was in the grip of the global recession, but as far as Paul was concerned, the British people still had a love of great-tasting food and he insisted that his latest creation would be a big success.
‘There may be a recession, but let them eat bread,’ he told the Daily Telegraph. ‘I know it’s the credit crunch and bread is obviously a staple known for being cheap. But it’s a fantastic loaf – the best I’ve ever made. We’ve been conducting tastings in local delicatessens near us and the feedback is amazing – everyone loves it. And I personally don’t think there’s any harm in pushing the boat out and using top-quality ingredients. If you think of the ordinary loaf of bread it’s quite plain and often lacking in excitement. If you were to compare it to a car it might be a Ford Fiesta, for example. But this is the Rolls-Royce of loaves.’
He also insisted that customers were getting what they paid for. Like any true artisan, he had lavished time and effort in selecting the constituents of the bread, making sure his loaf was the best money could buy.
‘I have searched all over the country and Europe to make sure the ingredients are the very best available,’ he explained. ‘The flour I use is grade A. It has no additives, emulsifiers, E numbers or artificial flavourings. It is as close to pure as you can get.’
But it wasn’t just hearsay that the bread was the most expensive you could buy in the UK – it was also officially recognised as such by the National Association of Master Bakers. President Chris Beaney commented: ‘This truly is a super-specialised loaf of bread and one that has a very niche market. At £15 it certainly is an expensive option but it’s all down to the ingredients. They really are a cut above. There is a growing demand for this kind of bread – it has a sourdough base which has proved very popular in recent years. Not every baker would be able to sell this kind of bread but I think most of them would certainly like to try it – it sounds very tasty indeed.’
And as far as Harrods were concerned, they were delighted that Paul had chosen their store. A spokesman said: ‘At Harrods we are always on the lookout for exciting new products that are also of the best quality. This is the perfect bread for consumers wanting luxurious bread in the run-up to Christmas. At Harrods, we believe in catering for all tastes and price ranges.’
Understandably, the loaf caused a stir, and as the press clamoured to cover the story of Paul’s expensive bake, the Kentish Gazette said: ‘Crumbs! Have you seen the price of bread these days? Well take a deep breath, for this costly cob, at £15 a loaf, is not a credit crunching option. This is no ordinary bread because it is made with a special recipe created by master baker, Paul Hollywood, from Wingham, and sells in Harrods of London’. Ever the businessman, Paul told the paper: ‘We are really excited about working with Harrods. They are keen to try all the new and unusual flavoured breads, like our Roquefort and almond loaf, which is presented in a red and gold box. Have a slice of it with a cup of tea and you won’t want to touch your turkey.’ And even if the loaf didn’t fly off the shelves owing to the hefty price tag, at the very least it had generated a huge amount of publicity.
But while the Roquefort and almond loaf was certainly the most expensive loaf that Paul had ever produced, he was also coming up with other exotic recipes. Variations included a sour cherry and chocolate loaf for those with a sweet tooth, as well as rosemary and garlic bread and a special Christmas bread: apricot couronne. Shaped like a crown, he insisted that it ‘could be the finest thing you taste this festive period’ in the same interview with the Kentish Times, before adding: ‘It’s filled with cranberries, walnuts, almonds, apricots, macaroon and orange and lemon zest.’
It seemed Britain had embraced artisan baking. The once small industry of artisan bakeries was growing rapidly by 2011, according to a feature in The Grocer. ‘As sales of artisan bread rise,’ wrote Virginia Matthews, ‘independent bakers are looking to broaden their reach to cash in on the growing appetite for tasting alternatives to the traditional white sliced loaf’.
At this point in time artisan bakers held a 5 per cent slice of the market, but were hoping to boost shares through new and innovative means. French bakery chain Paul, for example, was looking to team up with Waitrose in the hope of rolling out their products in some of the supermarket’s London stores, which already stocked the artisan range from French bakery Poilâne. Another artisan bakery called Gail’s was also planning to expand its chain of six stores by opening another on London’s trendy Exmouth Market. However, some diehard artisan bakers believed that if they went into business with supermarkets, it would cheapen their market value. They would effectively be forced to reduce prices in order to compete with the cheaper loaves of bread typically found on supermarket shelves.
Paul waded into the discussion. ‘The debate over what constitutes an authentically artisan loaf will continue forever,’ he told The Grocer. But he insisted the issue was not whether or not artisan bakers should reduce their costs, but said it was up to supermarkets to increase the prices of more run-of-the-mill loaves. According to him, bread should be that bit more expensive as it had been sold at an ‘artificially low cost’ for too long.
‘The price of wrapped bread was far too low for far too long and I am probably one of the only consumers in the country who applauds the fact that the cost of a factory loaf has started to rise fairly dramatically in recent months, making it on average only 20p or 30p less than one of my own standard loaves nowadays,’ he told the trade journal. ‘I believe it’s possible for artisan bread to double its market share to 10 per cent fairly rapidly but beyond that I’d argue we need to encourage greater consumer experimentation by putting a premium on all bread.’
For his own part he was keen to stress that he didn’t always insist on eating artisan bread – far from it. He told The Grocer that he preferred a Chorleywood for his own bacon sandwiches, and understood perfectly why many parents chose a white sliced loaf for their children’s lunchboxes. Even so, he was keen to stress that artisan breads shouldn’t ‘remain the province of the well-heeled’. ‘Many people living outside London and the M25 want to try something special for breakfast, and, given the reduced cost differential today, I see no reason why artisan bread shouldn’t become at least a once-weekly staple for them,’ he said. ‘They simply need better access to something decent.’
The rise of the Artisan Bread Company from a small startup to a big business with a high turnover proved that Paul could turn his baking skills into a lucrative enterprise. His eagerness to encourage more folk to buy artisan bread showed a strong determination to continue to develop the business.
More interestingly, he also appeared to be doing what a lot of celebrity chefs have done… but in reverse. While many TV chefs have used their newfound fame on the box to launch business opportunities, such as merchandising, product ranges and food brands, Paul was doing the opposite. Despite a brief foray into the world of TV cookery, his career path would see him launch a successful brand in the form of the Artisan Bread Company before going on to find wider fame, thanks to The Great British Bake Off.
In recent years other celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson have become prolific in their endorsement of everything from egg timers to aprons, in addition to their books. Jamie Oliver was initially known as ‘The Naked Chef’ courtesy of his cockney accent, relaxed appearance and no-nonsense attitude in the kitchen, where he is happy to eschew strict weights or measurements in his recipes. Meanwhile, Nigella is the self-styled ‘Domestic Goddess’ whose penchant for wearing figure-hugging gowns that cling to her curves while she whips up gooey desserts attracts numerous column inches. They are each a brand, following in the footsteps of pioneer and Bake Off judge Mary Berry in seeing the potential to capitalise on their name.
Jamie Oliver followed a very similar template to Mary Berry in mapping out his brand with a range that includes seasonings, pasta sauces and stuffings. His books earn him millions. In 2002 Jamie set up Fifteen, a restaurant run by apprentices wishing to move away from their difficult backgrounds through what Oliver calls ‘meaningful hard work’. On top of this he has become an ardent campaigner for healthy eating in schools, a passion that took him all the way to Downing Street and eventually earned him an MBE. It was a campaign that would surely not have gained so much momentum without Jamie’s high profile or indeed the popularity of his trusted brand.
Another celebrity cook who has trodden a similar branding path is Nigella Lawson. Her success means her brand – Nigella – is instantly recognisable. Having written restaurant reviews for The Spectator and then a food column for Vogue, her first cookbook, How to Eat, sold 300,000 copies and became a bestseller. Two years later, How to be a Domestic Goddess won the British Book Award for Author of the Year. Literary success was accompanied by a move on screen, with a Channel 4 series called Nigella Bites. And then in 2002, she launched her own cookware range, Living Kitchen, which is currently valued at £7 million.
Another example of a cook developing into a brand is Delia Smith, who published her first recipe in 1969 and has since gone on to sell 14 million books. Her TV series attract millions of viewers. If any evidence was needed to prove her value as a marketing tool, her name was even included in the Collins English Dictionary in 2001, owing to the fact that it had become such a part of everyday conversation. Much has been written over the years about the so-called ‘Delia Effect’, in particular after the publication of her hugely successful How To Cook books, the first of which was released in 1998 and tied in with her TV series of the same name. The ‘Delia Effect’ was used to encapsulate the phenomenon where supermarket shelves were suddenly emptied of particular items featured on her shows.
There was reportedly a 10 per cent rise in egg sales in Britain off the back of the How To Cook series. A struggling Lancashire firm was brought back from the brink of collapse after Delia used their omelette pan on her show and described it as a ‘little gem’. Sales went through the roof and the firm reported that they went from selling 200 pans a year to 90,000 in four months. Other ingredients to instantly run out of stock included cranberries – there was apparently a national shortage in 1995 – as well as vegetable bouillon powder, limes, and kitchen equipment such as pestles and mortars. Sea salt, prunes and instant mashed potato were also boosted by Delia’s recommendations. The phenomenon suggested that celebrity chefs could have a powerful influence on our eating habits.
By 2001, after the third and final How To Cook book was published, the ‘Delia Effect’ had become a frequently used phrase. The BBC reported that the noun ‘Delia’ was included in a new edition of the Collins English Dictionary after publishers found that it had passed into everyday use. Using a computer database of 418 million words that were spoken and written in English, pooled from various television shows, books, conversations and newspapers, a staggering 700 references to ‘Delia’ were found. Other entries centred around Delia’s name included a ‘Delia dish’, described as a recipe or in the ‘style of cooking of British cookery writer Delia Smith’, as well as ‘Delia power’ and ‘Doing a Delia’.
Christmas sales have been transformed by the power of Jamie, Nigella and Delia. Both Jamie and Nigella recommend goose fat to crispen up roast potatoes, and, as a result, supermarkets have recorded unprecedented sales around this time of year. The Daily Telegraph reported that, at Sainsbury’s, sales of cinnamon sticks were up 200 per cent on the same period the previous year, while sales of Marsala wine, an ingredient in Delia’s panettone trifle, went through the roof by 300 per cent. Sales of pickled walnuts doubled after Delia coupled it with braised venison in 1994. The newspaper reported that her recipe for chestnut cupcakes also caused shoppers to stock up on new ingredients, including crème de marrons, a sweetened chestnut purée, and chestnut flour, which hadn’t been widely stocked until Delia’s successful TV series, Classic Christmas. A spokesperson for the supermarket chain told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Every year we get calls about the ingredients that feature in celebrity chef tips. In the past we have answered calls on goose fat, cranberries and, last year, semolina due to Nigella Lawson’s roast potato tip, with sales shooting through the roof. This year calls have led to us stocking the unusual chestnut flour in our special selection range.’
Paul had, of course, intended to make the most of the Christmas market with his various exotic breads. He too knew how to turn food into a moneyspinner. By 2010, the Artisan Bread Company was going from strength to strength. It seemed he no longer needed TV stardom to make a living: his business was already doing that for him.
It was somewhat ironic then that just around the corner an opportunity to become a true TV star would present itself. Brand Hollywood was about to get an unexpected, though enormously welcome, boost.