Bakery cooks up three winners on home turf
ELMORE Bakery took the blue ribbon in three categories of the Bakery Showdown at the Bendigo Agricultural Show recently.
The bakery won Best Meat Pie, Best Pastie, and Best Hedgehog, judged by 2013 MasterChef Australia winner Emma Dean.
Co-owner and baker, Travis Wilson, said the team was “pretty chuffed” its creations were officially crowned best in Bendigo, and said he wasn’t surprised it did so well.
Wilson said he believed the main reason was, “Just the love and care we put into them, I think.”
“Over the years we’ve just adjusted to make things just perfect really, and we’ve always asked for customers’ feedback and always get our bakers to taste our products,” he said.
“We’re always trying to find better ways of doing things and having them very fresh as well.”
Great care was taken in the preparation of the delicacies for the competition, said Wilson.
“The chunky beef pie was just a slowly cooked pie with diced beef, and we slow-cooked it for hours to make it really tender,” he said.
“That’s the one that we entered, and we thought it was an amazing pie and we ended up winning.
“We always sell lots of pasties and we decided to give that a go as well.”
As to the key to making a good meat pie, Mr Wilson had a few tips.
“The base of the pie has to be nice and firm, and almost crunchy when you bite into the pie, and on top you want it to be nice and flaky,” he said.
“We make our own puff pastry, which is just absolutely beautiful, and then you obviously need a great filling to go with that, something that’s very flavoursome.”
Elmore Bakery is at three locations in Bendigo East, Elmore, and Marong.