By PEACE IJIYERA
WHEN Spencer McNally first started working simply as a shop assistant at Pie Addicts Morwell six months ago, he never would have thought he’d hold the title of award-winning pastry chef.
Last month at Australia’s Best Pie and Pastie Competition, hosted by Baking Association of Australia on the Gold Coast, Mr McNally won two silver medals for his Texas Chilli Beef and Chicken Sun Dried Tomato pies in their respective categories.
Mr McNally began his career as a bread baking apprentice at Coles. He said his love for baking started at a young age.
“I’ve always been interested in baking from being little. I always helped my mum bake and pretty much after that, I’ve always wanted to go into baking,” he said.
“So from a young age, I’ve always known what I wanted to actually do.
“It was just trying to figure out what side of the baking that I was interested in. I started off as the basic bread baking and turns out that I’m actually better at being a pie maker, pastry chef.”
Hiring Mr McNally as a shop assistant, Pie Addicts owner Debbie Carrodus began noticing traits that she thought would make him a good pastry chef.
“I hired Spencer, he [came] in … to be a shop assistant, nothing to do with baking because he had no pastry cook experience whatsoever. But then we just started giving him like a couple of odd jobs to do,” she explained.
Some of these jobs included finishing off pizza pies and quiches. Ms Carrodus saw something in Mr McNally that made her think “I reckon I can teach him to make pies”.
When asked what it was that she saw in him, Ms Carrodus said it was his passion and willingness to learn.
“You’ve got to have that love for baking I think. You’ve got to have that passion in you,” she said.
“And you just can’t teach that, it doesn’t matter how much schooling you have. If you haven’t got that passion, you’re not going to make as good a product as someone who has the passion, even though they haven’t got the formal training.”
Mr McNally believes he was born with this passion and hopes he never loses it, with aspirations of one day owning his own business.
The Texas Chilli Beef and Chicken Sun Dried Tomato pies are two of the shops best sellers. With 40 years in the baking industry and experimenting with flavours, Ms Carrodus is of the opinion that creatively, almost anything can go into a pie.
With the competition held on the Gold Coast, unfortunately, the pair weren’t able to attend. Working together, Ms Carrodus made the fillings, while Mr McNally was in charge of making the pastry, assembling and cooking the pies. The pies were couriered off as they anxiously awaited the results.
“I was keeping an eye on the competition page every day … as soon as I seen my one I went to my wife and said ‘I won silver, me and Deb won silver’, Mr McNally said.
“I was really excited.”
To get recognition like this is a confidence boost for him.
“I never thought that I would get something like this, like an award, big silver medal like that from a competition.
“I think it was more I never actually believed in myself that I could, but now I actually have that confidence”.
“And that’s why I wanted him to do it, because I know it builds your confidence and builds on your passion that you’ve already got too,” Ms Carrodus added.
In September, the duo are going for gold at the Great Aussie Pie Competition. This time they will be attending as the competition is being held in Melbourne.
Until then, Mr McNally continues to enhance his skills, learning tips and tricks from Ms Carrodus every day.
Describing Mr McNally as a “sponge”, Ms Carrodus says “to have someone who enjoys to learn it, makes it enjoyable for me to teach it”.
