Thorobread Bakery, Racecourse Rd, Hamilton

See what they did there? No, ‘Thorobread’ isn’t a typo – it’s a tricky little play on words from the bakery parked directly across the road from the entrance to Eagle Farm Racecourse at the top end of Racecourse Rd Hamilton. Very clever.

One can easily imagine the parade of drunken broke punters scratching around in their pockets for loose change at 5.30pm on a Saturday afternoon… to provide them with enough sustenance to make the arduous trek to The Hammo for the last 20 rum and cokes of the day; while girlfriends Courtney, Tiff, and Summer sway and screech at the passers-by outside whilst clutching high heels in one hand and bummed durries in the other. It’s not a big stretch, is it?

Having never been in this position, I ventured in on a weekday. The store itself is very nice, airy, and the lady behind the counter is very friendly and welcoming. The sign outside proclaims that the preservative-free bread is their specialty, along with award-winning pies. You can even ‘Like’ them on Stalkbook, should you be so inclined. I’m not sure when the bakery opened its doors, but I believe it hasn’t been there all that long. Perhaps the awards were won at a previous location – I’m not sure.

Thorobread Curry Beef

Rimmer and I had a curry beef, a steak bacon & cheese, and a steak and kidney. I had already tried a curry beef and wasn’t impressed with the filling – everything else was pretty good, but it just didn’t have enough curry flavour for me. Rimmer was in agreement, and was sorry he chose it. His words: ‘fail’. Doesn’t mince words, our Rimmer.

The pies come in a little foil nest with holes punched into the bottom, which allows the base to cook through. Too many bakeries don’t do this, and you end up with a doughy, sloppy bottom….and I don’t need to tell you how undesirable that is. Similarly, the lid has been cooked out really well, and is nicely brown without egg wash. 

Overall, the pies have a homey, slapped-together-in-a-sheltered-workshop look which I find pretty appealing. The cost was about $4.50, which is OK, but these were nothing more than your basic standard size; perhaps slightly smaller, as they weren’t overly thick through the middle.

Steak Bacon Cheese

My steak bacon & cheese looked great in the mounting yard, and came out of the gate at a million miles an hour, with a nice scattering of cheese on top, accompanied by more cheese and bacon throughout. The filling was mainly chunks of steak that were generally well cooked and overall it was pretty good without being great. In a horse race, this would have settled three wide at the turn and never kicked on. A reasonably solid performance, but not enough to become a black booker. Score is a shaky 7/10, helped along by the casing top and bottom.

With a slightly disappointing first leg, the steak and kidney blew out in the ring, as the punters were not overly enthusiastic about her stablemate. She was a feisty little filly however, and it immediately became apparent that she had the potential to go the distance. The filling was a pretty good consistency being mince through a thick gravy, and there was plenty of kidney flavour apparent straight out of the blocks. 

Steak & Kidney

Nice base

I was happy with the amount of kidney chunks scattered throughout, although some more seasoning wouldn’t have gone astray. It was hands and heels to the line for the place. Score again is a 7/10; but it’s a solid 7. I probably could have awarded 7.5 - 8/10 if both pies were thicker – the photo of the steak and kidney especially makes it look thicker than it really was because the pie is tipped up a bit. I probably could have eaten three without too much trouble.

Steak & Kidney Innards

Thorobread Bakery probably needs a fair bit of encouragement with the jigger to turn it into the Black Caviar of bakeries, but it’s safe from the glue factory for now…and if you happen to be one of those poor souls who had the house on your mate's roughie tip in the last (which stopped as if shot at the first furlong), then I daresay the pies at The Thorobread will go a long way towards easing your pain.

Until next time, take care.

Pieologist.

Flour Power, cnr Dornoch & Gladstone Rds, Highgate Hill

Remember folks - click on the images for full size!

We wheeled the big dak-dak into the small service road in front of Flour Power – a bakery that comes with an ardent group of online admirers. The first thing I noticed was that the whole place looked like it could use a good scrub (check out the signage)….but I reminded myself that we were next door to West End – and that the whole suburb west of Annerley Rd could do with a bloody good scrub. 

Now before you start getting all precious that I’m bagging a place that went through the floods last year, I’ll have you know that this bakery sits on a hill in the highest part of Highgate Hill. It’s about 400m above sea level. No excuses - scrub your frikkin’ shop, man.

The bakery specialises in sourdough. That should have been my second clue. I hate it. There’s a conventional pie menu (pictured, in its nicely laminated A4 format which was carefully sticky-taped to the outside wall of the building), plus a lamb pocket / triangle, cheese & spinach triangle (his description - it IS next door to Greeksville, after all) and a vegetable pastie, which I imagine is very popular amongst the smelly, pierced, jobless hippies living in and around the West End.

The shopkeep was a very friendly young bloke, and the windows were full of really good looking breads, cakes, brownies, pull-aparts, and mini-brioches….it all looked very appetising, in contrast to the exterior appearance of the shop itself.

The pies looked pretty good up top, but the experienced observer could see even through the window of the warmer that there was no flaky lid – they were kind of flaky, but in a glazed-biscuit kind of way. They came served in a foil nest.

Curry Beef

Rimmer & I both had a curry beef, plus I had a Steak Tomato and Onion; and Rimmer had Steak Bacon & Cheese. Both of our alternative pies were second choices after being informed that our first choices weren’t available. 4 pies were $13.60.

We sat outside at the grubby outdoor setting, which could have been nice with a bit of care and attention. Seriously dude, buy a Chux.

Out of the foil, the bottom of the pie was barely cooked – Rimmer’s Steak Bacon Cheese was translucent, and he said that it definitely wouldn’t pass the driving test. Mine held together OK, but again the base was very floppy and undercooked.

Curry Beef interior

Both curry pies were lukewarm, temperature-wise…heat-wise, they were cold. Even Roobs could have eaten this one. As you can see from the top photo above, there is barely a sprinkling of curry powder on top – I think that the only curry inside the pie was the powder that managed to filter its way through the lid’s cracks. The meat was OK, consisting of clusters of mince floating about in a flavourless gravy.

It was an epic fail for both of us on all fronts. I’d struggle to give this a 4/10. In fact, I’m not going to. It gets a 3/10: one point for it actually being a pie (everyone deserves a point for turning up), another for not falling apart on me, and a third because he was a nice bloke.

Steak Onion & Tomato

My steak, onion, and tomato was the same story on the exterior – not good. The interior was markedly better, with plenty of onion and tomato, as you can see from the pictures. The flavour from actual veges went through the meat and gravy which was a good consistency; but again lukewarm and unsatisfying – like a one-armed hug (apologies to anyone out there with only one arm – I’m sure the people that you hug aren’t thinking that. I was really referring to people who choose to hug with one arm…the lazy huggers). For those reasons, it gets a bare pass of 5/10, based on the quality and flavour of the filling alone.

Steak Tomato Onion

Rimmer said that his steak, bacon, and cheese was a little hotter - possibly due to the visible cheese within – but there was no crunchy cheesy top, and he was pretty underwhelmed by the whole experience. So was I. So much so that we considered giving the bakery a one-word review: FAIL, so as not to waste time and energy on it. But I think the public needs to know.

As I couldn’t convince Rimmer to go halvies in a third pie (hoping that we’d strike gold), he agreed to try the cinnamon Berliner. It looked pretty impressive. It wasn’t. The much-anticipated light and fluffy interior was heavy and bready, and neither of us bothered to finish the half we had. The only high point was the generous crusting of sugar and cinnamon on the outside, which was really good.

I think Flour Power has a lot of work to do – certainly in the pie department. Maybe their sourdough is the best thing since, well, sliced bread. I’ll never know, as I won’t be going back.

Unfortunately I have a few more ‘Fails’ to share with you in the near future. I’ll try to intersperse them with good reviews – or maybe group a few short ‘fails’ together. For some reason, I’ve had a bit of a run of substandard pies recently. Popular opinion is that the Rock N Roll has spoiled me for all other pie shops, and it’s probably partly true. Still, the search continues.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to my new mate Gary Reilly, from Piefinder, who has put together a very comprehensive pie-appreciation site of his own. You should check it out:  http://www.piefinder.com.au/

Gary has reviewed over 350 pies on his site, and has an excellent Leaderboard and Pie Locator if you happen to be south of the border. 

Remember that I'm always happy to take requests if you have a bakery that is worthy of some scrutiny. Just hit the message board below and I'll get straight onto it for you.

Coming up soon, The Thorobread Bakery at Hamilton; and my own pie-baking experience at home this winter - including recipe.

Until next time, take care.

Cheers, The Pieologist