The Great British Baking Gear

Great British Baking Show Cutting Boards

March 28, 2021

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TLDR: We see cutting boards in nearly episode of The Great British Baking Show. The bakers have Joseph Joseph large Index™ Chopping Board Sets (Amazon Link) available to them.

What The Bakers Use

Joseph Joseph Index™ Chopping Board Set (Amazon Link)

Lets get this out of the way apparently a lot of places call the things in which you cut food on 'chopping' boards. Growing up in the United States I've always called them cutting boards. Thus, please forgive the colloquialism if you're visiting from a chopping board part of the world (and welcome!).

The bakers on The Great British Baking Show (Bake Off... theres that regional thing again!) have always had Joseph Joseph large Index™ Chopping Board Sets (Amazon Link) available to them. These are distinguished by the tabs on the side of board differentiating between boards for raw vegetables, raw fish, raw meat, or soup. Wait no - that is a horrible symbol for 'cooked food.' The white board is for cooked food.

However, if you've continued down the rabbit hole of The Great British Baking Show, you've probably come across The Great British Baking Show Masterclass in which Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood bake some of the dishes from the episodes of the show. You'll also notice they don't use the plastic Joseph Joseph cutting boards. They have something much nicer.

So lets take a look at the Joseph Joseph large Index™ Chopping Board Sets (Amazon Link) as well as the much nicer cutting board Mary and Paul use.

Why'd they go Joseph Joseph?

Joseph Joseph was founded by two brothers - Antony and Richard Joseph. They actually started off by making glass cutting boards that looked nice and were functional. More on my opinions of glass cutting boards later - they're not good.

However, Joseph Joseph, in opposition to my glass cutting board opinions, are very good. They're headquartered in London and have won quite a few awards for their products. They may have started with cutting boards but they've expanded and now have household products for nearly anything imaginable.

Being quintessentially British and having received their awards from Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, I'm honestly surprised everything on The Great British Baking Show is not made by Joseph Joseph. But then again I guess there are some other fabulous producers with British origins, and winning those awards can only get you so far. So far as - everyone has their cutting boards!

So where would be the easiest place to get their wares? Well they have a Joseph Joseph US based website which is awesome! However, you'll add things to your 'bag' instead of your 'cart' and shipping is going to take 3-4 days and be in the tens of dollars. Not too bad.

The other option I'm personally going with is their Amazon Web Store. Why? Being an Amazon Store I'm fairly confident that it is from Joseph Joseph and not their Chinese knockoff foes. The second reason? Prime shipping! I'll put my tens of dollars towards awesome things. And as far as I can tell the pricing is roughly equivalent (if not cheaper on Amazon).

(Shameless Plug!) If you're in the US or Canada or really anywhere... you can click this link for a free trail to Amazon Prime. If you purchase from them frequently (you probably already have this!), you can save quite a bit on shipping and they have some awesome other services included! (I joined when it was cheaper to join Prime than to ship a starter for my car - win.)

Nest™ Lock 10-piece Multi-size Container Set (Amazon Link)

Cutting Board Basics

MTM Wood End-Grain Cutting Board

If you have a kitchen and bake or cook regularly you probably have a cutting board of some type. Else you're cutting in your pots and pans or directly on your counter - which is bad. Unless you have an end-grain walnut counter top made for this - in which case - you so fancy!

So my opinion on glass cutting boards - they dull your knives! If you have a nice set of knives you should NOT be cutting on glass or ceramic. The glass and ceramic are both much harder than the edge of your knife blade. Every time you cut down on the glass you're dulling your knife.

Plastic, wood, or composite cutting boards are both softer for your knives but offer different advantages.

Plastic boards (such as the Joseph Joseph Index™ Chopping Board Set (Amazon Link) ) are very easy. First off they are dishwasher safe (well the Joseph Joesph ones are...) and fairly inexpensive. However, they mark when they're cut into and eventually look like the top of them is made from an old rag.

Composite boards - such as the Epicurean All-In-One cutting board (My favorite composite cutting board on Amazon), offer the same advantages as plastic but they wear quite a bit slower. Additionally, in my opinion they look really nice as well!

Lastly there are 2 types of wood cutting boards, long grain and end-grain cutting boards. Long grain cutting boards are what you're going to find in department stores and they're going to run a few dollars. You can see the grain of the wood running along it. When these are cut into they tend to age fairly quickly because you're cutting, at times, across the grains and permanently damaging the board.

On Masterclass you see Paul and Mary use the creme-de-la-creme of cutting boards. An end-grain cutting board made from a hard wood. I can not for the life of me tell who manufactured it but it is very pretty.

With end-grain cutting boards you're slicing into the end grain which tends to close right back up. Some woods such as teak have natural resins and oils which are antimicrobial and water resistant. The downside of these is that you must hand wash them, and they need to be treated with a food safe oil after use so they don't end up warping.

If you're looking to pick up an end-grain board Amazon has some decent and affordable options. However, might I suggest the OG of incredible end-grain boards MTM Wood. This guy is out of Russia and has a great Youtube Channel where he shows his process.

He has been ripped off every which way - even to the point that there is someone in Texas calling themselves MTM Something something wood works or something. LAME.

As a fair warning if you watch the MTM Wood Youtube series you will probably end up with one of these boards. I received one of MTM Wood's boards as a gift and it is incredible. It does take a little more TLC than our plastic cutting boards but it is absolutely amazing.