2025 Pyney’s 🥧 Reviews
Review No 59
Portarlington Bakehouse
(Portarlington VIC)
June 2025
This next review happened by total accident and was totally unexpected. After leaving rolling pin pies and cakes at Ocean Grove, I jumped in the car and just started driving and exploring the area. One of those areas I passed through was the beautiful town of Portarlington. Portarlington, a historic coastal town on the Bellarine Peninsula and is easily accessible by ferry from Melbourne, making it an ideal choice for a relaxing day trip. As soon as I drove through town, I saw the bakery sign and immediately pulled up outside, walked in and introduced myself.
The bakery has been in existence since 1980 and has a stunning wood fire scotch oven, which hadn’t been lit since the 1950s. The property was disused for many years then in 2000 Stephanie and Terry Christofi with the help of their 5 children took over and totally renovated the place to its current glory.
The day of my visit I was fortunate to met one of the owners daughters, Lucy who was more than willing to show me around this amazing bakery including its star attraction the working oven. What the family has done to this place is amazing and when they took over they have zero baking experience what so ever. Along with no experience comes another big challenge and that’s baking with a scotch wood oven. From what I’ve been told it takes time, it’s tedious, and can take many years to master.
The bakery has plenty of seating inside, out and has a beautiful garden area out the back. Once you step inside the building, you greeted by beautiful timber floors, a separate bread serving area which is funky and an exceptional cabinet display. The products on offer here are mouth watering and your going to have a difficult time deciding on what to order. Speaking of ordering it was time to grab a 🥧 and get to work.
There’s a great selection of 🥧’s on offer here and for this weeks review I went with one of there most popular flavours and that was their “Beef Curry” it’s been a while since I’ve had a curry 🥧 so I was keen to test this one out.
🥧 THE REVIEW 🥧
1. Value for Money – $7 was more than reasonable value for this 🥧. Another decent sized 🥧 in both diameter and depth and while it wasn’t weighed it felt quite heavy. Good value 8.5/10
2. Meat/Fill Ratio – Zero issues here the 🥧 was totally full. 10/10
3. Flavour – I would say this 🥧 would be on the mild side in terms of hotness, which will suit most punters. Me personally would’ve liked to see this one a bit 🔥er in flavour, but others would disagree. The meat was cooked really well and wasn’t grissley what so ever. This was nice flavour and would be ideal for any mild curry lovers out there. 7/10
4. Pastry – The first thing I noticed was the pastry being underbaked and too thick particularly on the bottom. As mentioned earlier baking in the scotch oven has it’s challenges and this could have easily been a once off. Apart from the bakes the rest of the pastry was great. Stability, top bake color, shape and stability were all very good and couldn’t be faulted. Sadly the bakes and thickness have let this score down. 5.5/10
5. Serving Temperature – Perfect serving temp. No issues at all. 10/10
Overall Rating
🥧🥧 41/50 🥧🥧
The score may not indicate, but this was actually a really nice flavoured 🥧. Sadly the bake and thicknesses did let the overall score down, but this could have easily been a once off especially using this wood fire oven. The flavour was solid, but for me personally I would’ve liked it a little bit more curry flavour. The average punter will really enjoy the mild curry mix. The $7 price tag was more than reasonable value, considering the size of this 🥧 and it was totally full. Would I have another one ? Absolutely yes !!! no question.
This bakery and Portarlington is 100% worth the visit. The bakery would be an ideal place to meet up with fiends, enjoy great food and relax. Add this place to your travel plans.
A massive thanks to Lucy and her team for their incredible hospitality, and for showing me around. It can be quite daunting when a random dude rocks up and wants to review your products, but these guys were so accommodating and I cannot thank them enough. This is a beautiful bakery, and I’m so glad I popped in and met the team. It’s not very often you get the chance to see a working scotch fire wood and this one was pretty awesome. Keep up the great work guys, this little community and passing tourists are so lucky to have a bakery like yours.
As always thanks for the ongoing support and keep supporting 🇦🇺 bakeries and don’t forget to invite all your friends to page.
