My own preferred fitness regime is to use my bicycle.
Paul Hollywood
Baking can be done with a few simple ingredients, so it's about simplicity and nostalgia - people are reminded of their childhood.
I love the sensation of being out in the open air, far away from all the distractions of modern life. I will usually disappear for a couple of hours, and that time on my bike is quite sacred, as it's when I do all my serious thinking. Sometimes I will stop off at bikers' cafe and have a bacon sandwich.
Baking is therapy.
I can be a romantic. The way to every woman's heart is through her stomach. Food is at the core of everything.
Everyone has a favourite cake, pastry, pudding or pie from when they were kids.
I find dealing with tempered chocolate a bit tricky, but that's a chocolatier's job. So I dabble, but I wouldn't profess to be good at it.
I've never been on a diet and never will.
One day, I'll disappear and hide in a corner of Britain. I'll own a bakery in a village, live above it, have a big garden because I like mowing. I want to get up when I feel like it, let people queue for my products, and when they're gone, shut the shop and think about tomorrow. Creating magic - that's my dream. And I'll do it.
I don't know any chef who doesn't like fast food.
There's something clean, simple, and even detoxifying about a loaf that contains nothing more than the best stone-ground, whole-meal flour, salt, yeast and water.
You can't beat a good doughnut. It has to be a jam one with light pastry and caster sugar on the outside. If I'm really tired, I have to hunt one down, because it gives me that sugar rush to keep me going.
Civilisation was built around wheat, around people settling down and not being nomadic. Baking is one of the oldest professions.
To make a full-blooded puff pastry, you need time, you need patience, and you need precision. It's all about the lamination: it's all about building up the layers of butter, dough, butter, dough; as the butter melts, it creates steam, and that brings up the layers of the two doughs apart from each other, and that's what gives it the rise.
Anything that has more buttercream than it does cake is going to be a no-no for me.
Some people seem to think their oven self-cleans, but you need to clean it to stop things getting blocked up so you get a good rotation of air and heat inside. Get a probe to test the oven is reaching what it says it's reaching too.
I sometimes worry that by encouraging so many more people to try their hand at baking through 'The Great British Bake Off,' I'm going to find myself in court one day charged with accelerating the national epidemic of obesity! To which I will plead not guilty. A slice of Victoria sandwich is never going to harm anyone.
I love evangelising about baking and passing the word on, and I will carry on doing that.
We didn't travel much when I was little - most of what we did was visit various campsites around Conway, north Wales. My first major holiday abroad was to Ibiza with my parents when I was five. I vividly remember the plane touching down and that the hotel had great swings with lots of little lizards darting about that I was determined to catch.
I drove from Naples to the Amalfi coast in an Alpha Romeo 1969 Spider, which was lovely. There have been lots of movies made down there, and I felt a bit like James Bond - the driving is quite hairy. The locals have mopeds, but you wouldn't catch me on a bike on those roads. A tank would be safer!
Even I don't always come up to my own standards of perfection.
The sugar tax is fine. I agree with that. But I think it probably doesn't go too far. But then, I work on 'The Great British Bake Off.' We make cakes with sugar and butter. I can't be too critical. It is like anything in life: it is all about moderation.
I still pinch myself that I have a second-hand Aston Martin DBS Volante, the convertible model of James Bond's car from 'Quantum of Solace' and 'Casino Royale.'
I am fascinated by Tudor times.
I can't go to sleep on a train anymore because people take photos of me. You know, dribbling. It's a bit embarrassing. I go to sleep with my collar up.
Since I was a kid, baking has been part of my life.
I think baking's far easier than cooking, and because of that, it's more approachable.
I can judge a restaurant by its bread: it winds me up that a lot of places buy pre-packed ones in and don't bother putting them in the oven to crisp them up again. And you shouldn't put bread on a side-plate: it needs to be pushed back into the centre of the table.
I want to pass on my secrets to people who are going to say, 'I have realised that I love baking, and now I'm going to make my bread and sell it at the local farmers' market,' or who might say, 'I am going to use the local Post Office in our village to sell my cakes.' I want to give them that little bit of fire.
I may demonstrate the various stages of making a loaf on stage, but they don't end up in the final product I lift out of the oven at the end. If it were real food preparation, I'd wear a hair net, a hat, and rubber gloves - not a pretty sight.
When I get home at night, I always have a soak in the tub before changing into my dressing gown and slippers.
Years ago, I saw a job for head baker for The Dorchester Hotel in London, and I didn't want to move away from the North West. But then I thought, 'I've got to do this for my career,' because I was very ambitious. So I went for it and got the job.
Dad was a baker, and we lived above the bakery, so I was always popping down to have an apple pie or a doughnut or a custard or gypsy tart: I had a very sweet tooth, and I think that that was what got me into doing what I do now.
It's a great thing because I've said to my lad, 'What do you want to do today - football, shopping, playing a game?' and he says, 'I want to bake with you, Dad.' And he loves it, baking with me.
Naples is curiously chaotic and, if I'm honest, a bit dilapidated. It certainly has a 'lived-in' look. It's alive, it's vibrant, it's a little bit dirty, it's busy, and I loved it. I felt like this was how Rome would probably have been 2,000 years ago. There's a real bustle, and it's down and dirty.
I do love my full English breakfast, but not every day. What I can't do without first thing in the morning, though, is my Danish pastry or a croissant - anything with a laminated dough, enriched with butter to make it beautifully golden and flaky.
I love Rome for their calzones and New York City for the variety of quality eateries, but I absolutely fell in love with Miami for the stone crabs at Joe's just off Ocean Drive - the best I've ever had, and the Cajun food. The steaks out there are colossal - it's like having a shark and a cow on your plate.
Crumpets I make myself. I love crumpets. You can't beat a good home-made crumpet.
I get marriage proposals, maybe one a week. Women do flirt, yes. They just want someone from the telly. They come and talk to you, and I guess baking is more attractive, and so they feel they have something in common with me. But I'm just a man from Liverpool. I enjoy what I do, and if that gets people baking, then even better.
A sponge is quite simple. You weigh ingredients, mix, and put it in the oven. With pastry, you manhandle it, shape it, fold it. You have to be involved with it; there is more jeopardy, more risk. But it's like making a casserole. There's a flurry of activity to begin with; then it's about leaving it to rest.
Ironically, when I was in Dubai with the BBC 'Good Food Show,' even though it's an urban area, when you see the vast panorama from the top of the Burj Khalifa, it feels remote, as if it's just sprung up out of the desert. I like Dubai. I didn't think I would, but the food and the people were great.
I don't believe in diets. They don't necessarily work. What they do is scrub your weight down, but as soon as you finish, you naturally go back up. I keep everything in my diet - gluten and sugar - I just cut it down a little bit and train more. It's not rocket science.
I have gone through some bad times with my own business. 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. I never came close to bankruptcy, but I had to cut back on staff.
My dad made these dough balls and covered them up with a cloth in front of a gas fire, which was stuck on a wall. They were rising. In my head, I think they were the best rolls I've ever had. If there was a starting point for me, that was it.
Get digital scales because, for baking, balance scales just aren't accurate enough: it's all in the weighing up.
It's the polar opposite of most people, but I absolutely hate carrying a ton of stuff onto a plane. I check in all my luggage and literally go through security with nothing other than my coat, in which I have my iPhone and iPad.
'The Great British Bake Off' has brought baking to the nation, and we've seen people from all walks of life and backgrounds experience the highs and lows of competition and, more importantly, helping each other.
I have been a baker for more than 30 years now, and in terms of equipment, all I really need is flour. It still amazes me what a versatile commodity it is, as you can do so many different things with it, and I never tire of trying new blends and recipes.
I'm quite shy, really. The figure you see on TV, that's just a persona. I like getting home, putting my feet up, getting into my slippers and dressing gown.
I've seen so many kids walking to school with these massive high energy drinks, and they are nine or 10. I'm like, 'What?' It was a treat for me. It is still a treat for my family.
