Day 3 In The Otways | Colac | Brandon Bakery
![photo[3]](https://piesaregoodforyou.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/photo3.jpg)
Day 3 of my trip in the Otway rain forest, and I decided to try this little bakery called Brandon Bakery in Colac on the way home. I assume this bakery is Colac’s cheap bakery. That is to say that every town has one, and is usually owned and run by Asians who haven’t yet caught onto the trend in Australia of overpricing everything. I was very hungry after a three-day fun-binge so I picked out a Shepherd’s Pie and a Beef and Mushroom Pie. I received a request from a fellow blogger asking me to reveal the great scam of too much potato, too little meat in shepherd’s pies. Since I usually do not buy shepherd’s pies (they are missing a lid) I took this opportunity to try one out from Brandon Bakery.
Pastry: the pastry on each pie was quite thin and floury, soft in places and not too dry. Reminds me of the pies I used to get from the corner shop for a dollar when I was a kid. There is nothing fussy about this pastry. It holds the meat, and tastes nice.
Meat: the beef and mushroom pie had a unique consistency. Slimy is the best adjective I could think of to describe it. Not oily, just a little slimy. I figure this is from using canned mushrooms which usually have a slimy consistency, however the mushrooms on their own weren’t too slimy and tasted quite fresh. This had me perplexed. Consistency aside, the mushroom pie had a rich pebble-meat gravy and nice touch of pepper. There were plenty of mushrooms. Moving on to the shepherd’s pie I noticed that the potato tasted like real mashed potato, which is rare in an industry where real potato is usually substituted with cheaper packet mix. The pebble-meat was obviously from the same batch that went into the mushroom pie, yet didn’t have the slimy consistency (logic tells me it was the mushrooms). Here is its downfall: the ratio of potato to meat is about 2 to 1, when it should be the other way around.
Overall Satisfaction: these pies tasted like cheap pies that you get from a cheap bakery. There was nothing at all wrong with them, in fact they were quite nice and sizable. However, there is nothing special about these pie, and there needn’t be. Pies like these have a special place of their own in the hearts of money-conscious pie enthusiasts.
Cost to Satisfaction Ratio: at $3.00 – $3.30 a pie these pies are considerably cheaper than any pie you will buy from a bakery with nice chairs or franchised name. For the price I would say that the cost to satisfaction ratio is moderate.
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Grading:
Shepherds Pie D+
Beef and Mushroom Pie C+
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