His piercing blue eyes strike fear into the hearts of amateur bakers. His feedback makes contestants quake in their aprons. A simple shake of his hand elicits tears of joy. He’s none other than Paul Hollywood, celebrity chef and one-half of The Great British Baking Show’s esteemed judging duo.

Paul, who’s been with the show since its inception in 2010, is a baker’s son who’s honed his craft around the world, served as head baker at luxury hotels, and published several bestselling cookbooks. And, as many fans of GBBS can attest, he seems nearly omnipotent in the tent — an imposing figure who’s done and seen everything, from fondant-covered works of art to the stodgiest, soggiest bottoms. 

But over the years, even this serious bread master, with his signature steely glare, has started to soften. He’s become more open with praise, some fans say — more willing to let his guard down for an exceptional sponge. Even now, he looks back wistfully at a select few bakes whose aftertastes still linger. “Hermine [of Collection 8] did a salmon quiche, and it stuck in my mind,” Paul tells Tudum. “I was really hungry, and I tried it and went, ‘Oh wow, I’ve got to have it. No one touch that. That’s my lunch.’ ”

Ryan’s key lime pie in Season 3 is an all-timer for Paul, along with contestant Paul’s lion’s head bread from Season 6. And he was especially impressed by Dylan’s gochujang buns this season (Collection 12). “You look at it and go, ‘Oh, that’s just a boule; that’s just a round loaf.’ But to achieve that finish, the quality, and flavor in the time that he had, which wasn’t a huge amount of time, was very impressive.”

Another standout from this season happens during Biscuit Week, when Christiaan impresses the judges with a revolving-stage showstopper. “Christiaan’s biscuit was just — I mean, it was one of the best things I’ve seen in the tent, and I said that at the time,” Paul says. “It was the quality of what he did. It was the flavors, it was the artistry involved. You have to be engineers, you have to be artists, you have to be bakers, you have to be all of the above just to get through to the next week, let alone win it.”

Christiaan’s biscuit stage

And while he’s candid about which desserts have stayed top of mind, when it comes to his standout winners, he refuses to play favorites. “Even if I did know, I would never ever say,” Paul says. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all winners. Of their time, they were the best that year. Each one of them went on a journey … some more than others.” Take Matty, for example, who took home the trophy last season.

“When Matty won, you would never have picked [him] to win in the first one, two, three, four programs, five programs,” Paul says. “He was on a journey … the classic [Baking Show] journey, where [he began] OK, he muddled through. He was never at the bottom. A couple of times he could have gone, but he managed to stay. All of a sudden, things started to drop in line: He started to listen to our judgments. He took on some of the ideas that we had [about] where he was going wrong, his flavors and so on and so forth. Then he nailed it at the right time in the final, because he was up against some great bakers.”

It’s classic GBBS: You can bomb a Technical Challenge but still take home Star Baker … so long as you don’t give up. Which brings us to arguably the series’ most controversial moment — when a baker quite literally threw it all away. Yes, it’s time to talk about Bingate. Back in 2015, Paul and his former co-judge, Mary Berry, tasked contestants with creating a Baked Alaska. After baker Iain decided that his dessert was doomed to fail, he threw the whole thing out — and presented his trash can to the judges instead. 

Matty, winner of Collection 11 

Paul says, when it happened, it was the show’s then co-presenter Sue Perkins who broke the news to him. “Sue came running up to me,” he says. “ ‘You’re not going to believe this. Iain just threw his bake away.’ I went, ‘What?’ I ran down to the tent to find out, and I looked at Iain ... He was in pieces, and I just popped the bin and went, ‘You’re joking.’ I just shook my head and walked away.”

Iain said at the time it was fellow contestant Diana’s fault — that she’d mistakenly taken his Baked Alaska out of the freezer prematurely. But Paul’s stance is clear. “The recipe was definitely wrong,” he says. “It’d only been out 29 seconds, because it was counted. It wasn’t the fact that the ice cream never set — it was never going to set, never going to set in a million years.”

What’s stuck with Paul about Bingate, he says, is that if Iain had made the cut despite not presenting anything, it would’ve sent the wrong message. “What does that say to children, if the person who loses his rag and throws it in a bin, that means you go through? No, that doesn’t mean you go through,” he says. “It means that you’ve given up.” 

Those who make it through, Paul says, are the ones who acknowledge their mistake and move on. “There’s still another two challenges where they could do really well and still stay in the tent, and a lot of bakers cannot get that out of their heads,” he says. “Once they’ve got that idea that they’re out, it’s all done, it’s finished. That psyche really takes over in their bake.”

If Iain had presented his actual bake — melted or not — Paul says he might’ve fared better. “If he’d showed us his meringue with a bit of slop in it, we could have judged his meringue and said, ‘Well, actually, he has made a mistake, but his meringue’s very good,’ ” Paul adds. “He may have even gone through, because his other bakes weren’t too bad … We made a conscious effort when that happened that no one throws stuff away like that. I’m sorry, but you can’t go through, because you decided not to give us anything.”

It’s this kind of tough love that’s earned Paul so much respect in the baking community — that and his formidable aura. But while he still stoically surveys the bakers from the corners of the white tent, never hesitating to shoot laser eyes toward someone under-proving their loaf, viewers have noticed a steady uptick in issuing out his coveted handshakes. 

Paul gives Dylan a handshake.

In fact, some would even argue Paul’s giving out too many. He doesn’t totally disagree, but there’s a bit more to it than that. “The standard has got better, and based on that alone, that’s why you’ll probably find more handshakes,” Paul says. “Every year they get better and better and better, and every year I end up giving out more and more handshakes, which is a little bit annoying, because they keep on moving the bar up.” 

Another reason for the increase is, because the show’s been around so long — nearly 15 years — competitors have gotten hip to Paul’s and co-judge Prue Leith’s preferences. “I’m acutely aware that the bakers know what I like,” Paul says. “They know I like key lime pie, they know I like donuts, they know I like crème [pâtissière], they know I like toffee and caramels and all this stuff, so they’ll play on that and go for the flavors that I like, or Prue likes … So that’s bakers doing their homework, which is what I would do if I was in this. I’d want a Hollywood handshake as well.”

By now, the bakers are also familiar with flavors Paul doesn’t like — but the ingredients still show up in their bakes from time to time. “I’m not a massive fan of matcha … Not a big fan of tofu,” Paul says. “But at the same time, I’m willing to try it to try and change my opinions … I have to sit above my judgment on the flavor and judge it for what it is.”

He’s also learning to wield his handshake with discretion, if he has to — like during this season’s Bread Week, when he issues the first-ever “Paul pat” to Georgie for her Chelsea buns. “It wasn’t quite there, and I’m glad I didn’t,” Paul says about abstaining. “Because then, when I saw Dylan’s, then that was the benchmark that I was looking for. She was close. I knew, I glanced across, and I did see Dylan’s coming, and I was like, ‘Oh God, no, this is close but no biscuit.’ ”

This season sees another first for Paul as well: showing bakers how it’s done, Hollywood-style. During Bread Week, he graces contestants with a bread-braiding demo. “[It’s] the first time we’ve done this demonstration,” he says. “I was going to do an [eight-strand plaited wreath], which is even more complicated, so I kept it pretty easy for them with a seven … but it’s highly effective, and it looks amazing.”

Fans have also noticed that the judge’s brusque demeanor has softened ever so slightly — like when co-hosts Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding crack a joke (occasionally at his expense) or when Prue slips a pun in. “The problem is, it’s quite a tactile thing, bread-making or whatever, so certain shapes can look a bit rude on camera,” Paul says. Like when, during the Collection 11 premiere, Nicky makes a cake shaped like a beaver. As she sets her bake on the judging table, Prue says, “So, Nicky, tell us about your beaver,” leaving everyone in the tent in stitches. 

“She’s embarrassing. That’s what she is,” Paul jokes about his co-judge. “I mean, Prue will say it, and I’m sure she’s saying it deliberately. We were doing sausage rolls, and she said to a guy, ‘I don’t think your sausage is big enough,’ and I just stopped and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to leave for 10 minutes,’ so I walked out the tent.”

Nicky’s beaver cake

But for Paul, those moments are emblematic of what the Baking Show experience is all about. “We all have a good sense of humor in the tent, and we all have a good laugh. I think that’s part of the magic of [the show],” Paul says. “The atmosphere in the tent is very jovial, it’s very happy, it’s very fun, so when someone says something to spark somebody else off, it just goes through it like wildfire.” And these days, Paul’s embracing that warmth — the kind that makes The Great British Baking Show what it is — more than ever. 

Watch The Great British Baking Show Collection 12 Trailer