The rise in popularity of home baking

Television programmes, celebrity chefs and a proliferation of books about baking are all testament to the rise in popularity of home baking in the UK over the past few years. This is a trend that seems to be as popular with the under 25s as it is with older generations.

Let’s look at how the trend for baking has changed over the years. In the sixties, baking had begun to decrease in popularity, partly due to the cessation of rationing after the war. It started becoming a treat to go out and buy the many mass produced goods once again available in the shops rather than staying home to bake your own. The rise of feminism also had an effect, with the notion of a woman staying home to bake goods for her man starting to fall out of favour. There weren’t very many men baking for their families in those days!

With the appearance of the first few ‘celebrity’ bakers on television, such as Fanny Craddock in the sixties and Delia Smith in the seventies, baking started to come back into favour again. However it is really only in the last decade that it has reached the dizzying heights of popularity it now enjoys. The Great British Bake Off is credited with inspiring thousands of people to start baking for the first time, or to be more adventurous with the types of baking recipes they attempt. And baking is no longer seen as something that only women do in the home, with many men now just as keen to have a go.

Increase in sales of baking equipment

The popularity of baking has led to a rise in the sale of not only baking ingredients, particularly during the airing of The Great British Bake Off, but also all sorts of baking tools and equipment. Ordinary consumers are now buying the sort of tools and equipment previously only used by professional bakers, and there is a noticeable spike in sales of such items every time the The Great British Bake Off returns to our TV screens.

Cupcake kits become particularly popular around this time, which is probably largely due to cake week on the programme. Sales of cupcake toppers have also risen each time the show airs. The Great British Bake Off final was watched live in 2017 by 7.3 million viewers, with the total rising to 7.7 million when including those viewers who watched on Channel 4 +1, so it’s hardly surprising that it is having such a significant effect on sales of baking ingredients, tools, baking equipment and kits.

As well as home baking for fun, there has also been a growing rise in the number of baking start-up businesses, including bakeries, cake makers and cake decorators. These increased by twenty percent between 2016 and 2017, and figures from 2012 to 2016 increased by a mind blowing 1500 percent! Consumer tastes for homemade food and treats together with our increasing taste for artisan products has helped support the success of many of these new independent baking businesses.

It will be interesting to see whether home baking continues to increase in popularity or whether the public will eventually tire of it. All we know is that most people we know can’t wait for the next season of The Great British Bake Off so the trend is still going strong right now.