Is the Great British Bake Off killing off the sliced white loaf?

The Great British Bake Off, currently enjoying its sixth run on BBC1 on Wednesday evenings, could be the best thing since sliced bread – literally.

There is growing evidence that a trend, driven in part by popular television shows such as the BBC's baking battle, for people to go it alone in the kitchen could be killing off the traditional packaged sliced white loaf, which one research company said may already be in "terminal decline".

Euromonitor International has published figures showing bread sales overall in the UK could fall four per cent this year, following a five per cent decline in 2014, reports the Daily Telegraph. Sales are in part being propped up by demand for speciality breads such as gluten-free, which is set to enjoy 25 per cent growth this year, while 'packaged bread' such as the traditional sliced white loaf is falling much faster.

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Figures quoted by The Grocer in May revealed that combined sales of the three largest UK brands for sliced white fell £121m for the year to March 2015. Kingsmill was the worst affected, shedding £75m to £314m total sales, while Warburtons and Hovis fell £35m and £11m respectively.

While sales of most types of pre-prepared bread are seeing falling growth or are in outright decline, home baking is surging. The Telegraph notes sales of baking trays at Waitrose soared by 881 per cent in the last week of July, just before this year's series of The Great British Bake Off began. Sales of bakeware overall increased by 55 per cent.

In reality the trend away from sliced white has been brewing for a while and now appears to be accelerating. According to an article published in The Guardian two years' ago, sales of sliced bread have "declined by about two to three per cent every year since the end of the Second World War".