WITH a stunning win of four golds, five silver and three bronze, Paul the Pieman in Inverloch took home an oven full of awards from the Great Aussie Pie Competition.
They won gold for their brisket and Jack Daniels pie, Korean pork pie, meat pastie and their beef, jalapeno and cheese sausage roll.
They got silver for their plain mince pie, chunky beef pie, beef, caramelised onion and cheese pie, scallop and fennel pie and pepper pie.
The bronze awards went to their sausage roll, surf and turf pie and Tuscan chicken pie.
“To come back with four gold medals is pretty good,” said pastry chef, Mitchell Woods.
“Last year, we only got one gold medal in this competition. The one in July, which is run by the Baking Association, we didn’t get a gold medal; we just got all silvers. So, everyone’s pretty proud to achieve that.”
Mitchell said the team are especially happy to have won an award for their meat pastie, which requires more preparation than the pies.
“We’ve never done a good competition pastie. It takes a little bit more time.”
It’s also a good test to see if they are hitting the benchmark or punching above their weight with their pies, pasties and sausage rolls, commented Mitchell.
“The reason we go into it is we want to make sure our quality is at a high level. So, for us, if we win all these awards, we know that what we’re doing is correct and of a high standard.
“One hundred per cent to win awards is always nice.”
With the national competition being held in Sydney, the team individually bake, freeze and box up four of each of their 12 entries and freight them overnight to the judges.
Once there, each product is judged when it’s both cold and hot on a points system, where a gold medal is given for those with a score of more than fifty points.
Pies are judged on how well the pastries have been cooked, pastry thickness and puffiness, how well its baked and how full the pie is.
The pie is then heated up and tasted, judges also take in the aroma and consider how inventive the recipe is.
“I think it’s good for our industry to show that pies aren’t what they were say 20 years ago, there’s a lot more to it now. It’s easy to make a pie, but it’s not always easy to make a good pie, and that’s probably what we’ve found, is that once you get the recipe to make a good pie, we can try a lot of other different types,” said Mitchell.
What the customer wants also drives the team to keep creating new and exciting recipes such as their brisket, mac and cheese pie, scallop and fennel pie, prawn and garlic sauce pie and the reef and beef pie.
“We’ve gotten a little bit more seafood, because, especially when it comes to summertime, that’s why a lot of people come to Inverloch. So, we’ve been able to incorporate that.”
Now that the competitions are over, Mitchell and the team will start thinking about the range of pies they’ll do for the next competition in six months’ time.
“It’s stressful, but it’s also fun. It’s fun to do something a little bit different as well,” said Mitchell, who emphasised the competition pies are the same as those they sell in store.
“We try to keep everything the exact same as what we put in the shop as well. We don’t change any ingredients or do a better product or anything like that. It’s the exact same.”
