A to Z of Australia: B is for Bourke Street Bakery

This is the second installment of my Australia series - the A to Z to Australia, and I'll be posting this in lieu of my Travel Tuesdays segment. I have realized that most of my Travel Tuesdays post garner the least number of page views - single digit views even, but I will not be scraping this segment, because Travel Tuesdays act as a travelogue for myself and a challenge for myself to actually look at my photographs and edit them. I have this very bad habit of not looking at any photos taken during my trip because I usually take many many photos on every trip and I utterly dread having to edit any of them. 

Okay, so today I'll be writing about Bourke Street Bakery! Even before I went to Sydney last year, I heard so much about them! So many Australian blogs have written about them, and this is not without good reason! They produce tarts, pastries and breads which have attracted fans from all over the place! And even before I went to Bourke Street Bakery, I knew how good their tarts were, because I got my hands on their book - and I've tried out the shortcrust pastry recipe. This recipe makes a lovely buttery crust which is perfect for fruit filled tarts and egg tarts :]

Anyway, Bourke Street Bakery is a small bakery located on well, Bourke Street, and on a rather quiet corner. In fact, if not for the long snaking queue outside the bakery and the glass window stacked with baked goodies, you would not know that Bourke Street Bakery was there. The bakery itself is really small, but service is really fast because they have at least 3 service staff attending to you. Most locals are there to purchase a rustic loaf of bread to go, but many tourists (like me) tend to want to order the whole bakery worth of goodies. The bakery sells a good mix of sourdough loaves - tons of them in fact, lots of muffin with different flavor combinations, tarts and of course, pastries! They have 4 of those wooden tables and benches that you can see in my photographs, and I managed to snag a seat. It was lovely because temperatures were just hovering around the fifteens and the sun was all warm and nice. Sorry I blanked out the face in the photo on the left because we're camera shy around here. I ordered three pastries which I've been dying to try - the pork & fennel sausage roll, the pan au chocolat and the ginger brûlée tart (they spell it as just brulee though).

I have to say that I wasn't too blown away by the pork & fennel sausage roll and the pan au chocolat, but that is not because they weren't great. It might be because I've been expecting way too much from Bourke Street Bakery, having heard so much about them, or it might be because of the awesomeness of the ginger brulee tart. It's basically a normal crème brûlée tart, but the crème is infused with what Paul & David (the owners) term as an Indian inspired spice - cardamom and ginger. This is something you gotta try - it's just the right amount of ginger and cardamom and spice and creaminess and 'crackling' that you need on a tart. The little nibs of pistachio also go perfectly well with the crème brûlée. For those who don't have the privilege of heading to Sydney to eat these lovely delights, I'll post the recipe for these ginger brulee tarts after I've tried them from the cookbook :]

Alright, I'll just let my photographs do the talking from now on - the light was really lovely so the photographs turned out pretty good :] (in my opinion)

The trio of pastries - just love their quaint metal saucer plates!

An array of tarts - their signature chocolate raspberry is on the left. And look - that's me with the camera in the reflection!

The famous ginger brulee tart - just look at that caramelized top!

GAWDDD creamy deliciousness await on the inside!

The chocolate roll was really lovely and flaky, but paled in comparison to the tart. I didn't like their  chocolate too much  because it tasted like compound chocolate :/

Oops I bit into the pork and fennel roll before I could take a nice photograph. Only gripe with this was that the roll wasn't warm, which didn't make for a nice sausage roll.  

Details

Bourke Street Bakery

Address: 633 Bourke Street, Surry Hills

Also located in Alexandria and Marrickville (rather far away from the city centre)

Opens: 7am-6pm Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm weekends

Price: $ ($4-5 for a tart, $5-6 for a sourdough loaf)