The ‘daggy’ pastry that just picked up the country’s top award

South Australia’s Orange Spot Bakery has just picked up two major awards at The Official Great Aussie Pie Competition – but one of the winning products is much too ‘daggy’ to appear in most major city bakeries.

The business in Glenelg, Adelaide took out the top prize in the Overall Plain Sausage Roll and Overall Meat Pastie categories of this year’s competition.

Pasties, which aren’t typically seen in city bakeries, are the bakery’s biggest seller with up to 600 sold each day – more than their sausage rolls, meat pies and sweet treats.

And speaking of sweet treats, the bakery also sells Kitchener Buns, a style of cream bun that’s made using a donut with jam and cream inside, found in South Australia.

Pasties and Kitchener Buns are most commonly seen in regional bakeries such as Orange Spot Bakery – and city dwellers are all the worse for it.

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Marc Cossens, the bakery’s Operations Manager for the past eight years, explained just what makes their award-winning pasties so special.

The savoury baked good has a larger vegetable-to-meat ratio than a traditional meat pie.

“The pasty is folded over, and it has potato, turnip, carrot, pumpkin, and beef mince,” Cossens said.

Their plain sausage roll has won multiple awards over the years, but Cossens said they have never stopped developing the recipe to “make it better”.

“You’ve got to keep evolving or you just stagnant,” he said.

The bakery loves nothing more than hearing customer feedback to understand exactly what is working, and what is not.

“Occasionally someone will say, ‘Did you do something different?’ and I go, ‘Yeah, we’re just trying new things’,” Cossens said.

“It’s a bit of trial and error. Sometimes you don’t get it 100 per cent right, but you just go back and start again.”

Cossens has been baking since he was a teenager, following in his brother’s footsteps, and he has never stopped learning.

“Techniques stay the same, but it’s more of just getting the flavour right, and experimenting with different products or different ingredients,” he said.

He has the perfect mentor in Orange Spot Bakery owner Nick Davey, who has owned the business for 22 years. At the age of 72, he’s done it all.

Unlike many traditional bakeries, which typically sell more during winter, Orange Spot does bigger business in summer due to being located in a major tourist region.

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“Glenelg is a great location. Being a seaside location, it’s always hustle and bustle,” Cossens said.

“If you come to Adelaide, you’d be crazy not to go to Glenelg.”

If you really want to feel like a local, he advises pairing your pastie, sausage roll or Kitchener’s Bun with a Farmers Union Iced Coffee – another regional favourite that comes in a paper milk carton.

Cossens’ go-to snack at the bakery is a cocktail pie or a hot pastry “fresh out of the oven”, although he describes himself as more of a snacker than a meal eater out of necessity.

“I like to test everything just to make sure it’s up to standard,” he said.

“Nick is famous for cutting half a pastie and he’ll leave the other half, and I’ll come past and grab it.”

While Orange Spot Bakery focuses on traditional regional favourites, they do trial new flavour trends.

One recipe Cossens recently developed happened after he discovered Aldi’s Maple Bacon.

“I was smashing it and I thought, ‘You know what? Why don’t I put it in a pie?’ ... That actually won last year’s Baking Association of Australia’s best pie award.”