Hearthrob Paul Hollywood cooks up a sales storm

Hit TV show ‘Paul Hollywood’s Bread’ has created an enormous boom in bakery equipment sales, new Debenhams’ figures reveal.

Thanks to Hollywood’s passion for bread baking, sales of traditional bakeware such as mixing bowls, scales and other accessories have seen the biggest rise, up by 207% versus this time last year.

Electrical bread makers, dough mixers, baking trays, measuring jugs, scales and even oven mitts are also selling like hot cakes, says the high street store.

The dramatic rise has coincided with the broadcast of the popular BBC 2 baking series, which has been on air for six weeks.

Said Debenhams Head of Home Buying Alice Duggan: “Thanks to Paul Hollywood, Britain is becoming a nation of bread bakers once again.”

“His reassuring yet authoritative tone of voice makes all food lovers want to follow tradition by baking beautiful, hand-crafted loafs rather than buying them in a supermarket.”

At the same time, lazier bakers keen to 'rise' to the occasion without the effort are plumping for bread baking machines, sending sales soaring by 30% in the last month alone.

Alice Duggan continues; “Hollywood shows how simple it is to make beautiful buns, his good looks and sex appeal have sparked the nation’s interest and made Brits fall in love with baking once more.”

Retailer Sainsburys has also seen a spike in bread mixers and dough ingredients since the show has been on air.

“Sales of flour at Sainsbury's have been really strong over the last few weeks with a 30% increase in bread mixes” said Mark Moriarty, Sainsbury’s baking buyer. “We’ve just launched a range of Taste the Difference bread mixes which are all doing incredibly well too, showing the 'baking craze' is still very much apparent.''

And for the very first time, the baking boom is as much a trend amongst males as it is women.

Alice Duggan, Head of Home Buying adds: “We first saw an upsurge in our bakeware products following the Great British bake-off, but now we are seeing the Paul Hollywood effect across our sales. We are delighted that the impetus has been maintained throughout the winter and think it is a trend that appears to be here to stay.”

Debenhams bakeware is available in all stores nationwide and online at Debenhams.com.