Britain's Best Bakery

The intense baking competition returns, beginning in Yorkshire as a contemporary Yorkshire baker goes head-to-head with a 1940s vintage style cake maker and a Ukrainian bread specialist.

Northumberland and County Durham come under the spotlight as a builder turned baker enters the fray battling against artisan bakers from Darlington and a father and son team serving Geordie classics.

Today, three bakeries from Derbyshire and Staffordshire come under the scrutiny, a pair of traditional pudding makers come up against a self-taught husband and wife pie making team and two self-sufficient Greek inspired bakers.

Three Scottish bakeries enter the baking arena including a community bread bakery, an artisan bread makers from Edinburgh and a Perthshire-based Israeli baker who mills his own flour at a 400-year-old watermill.

The competitive baking series continues with the first regional final, featuring bakers from Scotland and the North East of England. All must create an afternoon tea to wow judges Mich Turner and Peter Sidwell and create a complicated layered hazelnut meringue gateau with hazelnut praline.

Featuring a former navy chef who hopes his rum babas will help him sail to victory, a self taught artisan baker who showcases fennel and spinach bread, and a cake specialist who battles with her puff pastry. Today's challenge is to create fudge frosted choux eclairs good enough to win a place in Friday's regional final.