A West Australian bakery has won the coveted award for Australia’s best sausage roll at the Official Great Aussie Pie Competition on Thursday.
Jack’s Bakery, located in the coastal suburb Halls Head, Mandurah has been operating for nearly 20 years.
Owner Vladas Kaskonas said, while the bakery has won awards for its sausage rolls before, this was its first national title.
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“We were ecstatic, we were over the moon,” Kaskonas told 7NEWS.com.au of the win.
He explained the sausage rolls entered in the competition must be the same as those sold to customers — meaning the win was a reflection of the everyday quality of the bakery’s products.
“There’s a lot of hard work put into it but at the end of the day, one of the stipulations in … entering the competition is that you must (sell) the same product that you put in the competition,” Kaskonas said.
Kaskonas said the secret to creating the perfect sausage roll is consistency.
“We’ve been doing it a long time,” he said.
“Time is essential, it’s not something that you can just … I mean, anybody can make a sausage roll but to make a quality, prize-winning sausage roll takes time.”
Kaskonas said the community feedback and support has been “tremendous”, with the bakery inundated with phone calls and visitors in the wake of the win.
And in holding the title of Australia’s best sausage roll for a full year, he doesn’t expect the excitement to slow down any time soon.
“It’s not just today and yesterday, it goes on for weeks and months to come,” Kaskonas said.
“I think this is why a lot of the bakeries and people in the industry get involved because it’s an ongoing scenario, for the next 12 months we’ll have a response to this major award here in Western Australia.”
While the annual competition is centred on one of Australia’s most beloved foods, the meat pie, the rules for submitting a sausage roll are just as strict.
Each bakery was allowed to submit one sausage roll which had to be no shorter than 10cm and no longer than 20cm.
The filling could be beef, pork, or a combination of both, and onion, carrot, herbs, and breadcrumbs were permitted to be added — nothing more.
Official Great Aussie Pie Competition officials judged the sausage rolls on several factures including colour, uniformity, pastry flakiness, meat quality and, of course, flavour.
Points were deducted for any filling shrinkage.
Aussie Pie Council competition organiser Dani Lindsay said this year’s competition was the biggest since its inception in 1989.
“Well done to all who have entered, we are blown away by the quality of this year’s entries and look forward to many more pie comps to come,” she said.
A total of 1500 pies, sausage rolls and pasties were judged over the course of the competition from Monday, September 11 to Thursday, September 14.
Paradise Bakehouse in Queensland won the major title of best plain meat pie for its chunky pie.
Other major title winners included Rolling Pin Pies and Cakes from Ocean Grove, Victoria, which won the best gourmet pie.
Best gourmet sausage roll was won by New York Cakes in Miranda, NSW.
The 2023 Official Great Aussie Pie Competition was held in Sydney at the Fine Food Australia exhibition inside the International Convention Centre.
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