How Paul keeps 50-year passion for baking fresh

From 2am starts to the most delicate of cake decorations, Paul Chambers has risen to every challenge thrown at him in a long baking career. JANET HUGHES finds out more

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Baker Paul Chambers is now training and development manager at award-winning West Country bakery Pippo & Co. Photo: Mauvin da Cunha

(Mauvin da Cunha)

AUL Chambers is refreshingly honest. No, he didn’t learn baking at his grandmother's knee, perfecting recipes that had been in his family for generations. No, other than rustling up liver and onions or sausage and mash for tea, his parents weren't into food either. No, he wasn’t interested in learning any culinary skills while growing up and only signed up for cookery classes in school because it was a good way of meeting girls.

Indeed, after leaving school at the age of 15, he was so blasé about the prospect of becoming an apprentice baker that he would have missed the interview if his RAF sergeant father hadn’t gone looking for him as he played out with a group of friends. This was the 1970s after all.

Yet what started out simply as the need to get a “proper job”, turned into a 50-year passion for baking.

Down-to-earth Paul may not be as famous as TV icons like Paul Hollywood or boast the social media profile of many of today’s new-wave artisans, but baking has been his bread and butter for most of his life.

And as training and development manager at award-winning West Country bakery Pipp & Co, he is teaching others the skills drilled into him during a near lifetime of making bread, pastries and cakes in firms across the region.

"I want to pass on this knowledge, and not just for Pipp & Co,” said Paul, who turns 66 this month. “I am hoping that people develop a passion for baking that they take out into the world.”

As a child, Paul lived in Singapore and RAF Lyneham before his family settled back in Swindon where he was far more interested in playing out with his friends from dawn to dusk than developing any hobbies that kept him indoors. It was at Churchfields High School that he had his first brush with the culinary world.