SOME of Tasmania’s best kept secrets are out of the bag after travel giant Wotif revealed its 2021 uniquely Aussie Award winners and finalists The “magic” of an original, 170-year-old wood fired oven has put a humble bakery situated halfway between Hobart and Launceston well and truly on the map as a tourist destination must. Travel giant Wotif unveiled its 2021 uniquely Aussie Award winners and finalists in late October, with the Ross Bakery Inn’s vanilla slice ranked as the second best in the country. And it didn’t take long for the news to have an instant impact for Bakery owners Kirsty Lloyd-Bostock and Carl Crosby. “One of Kirsty’s friends sent us a little note [on Facebook] saying congratulations on our award, we started researching it, and then it started to steamroll from there,” Crosby said. “The ABC news radio people called and we still hadn’t figured out what was going on… we were pretty happy, it’s not every day you get to be on the podium in a contest that is nationwide. “Right now on average we’re selling probably around 100 pieces a day, when the Wotif thing came out we went up to 300. It had that impact, just like that. “We make them in slabs of 30 and I made 10 slabs for the next five straight days. Had it gone on one more day I would have run out.” Crosby said the secret of landing the state’s best vanilla slice was all in the cooking method. The Ross Bakery Inn has a traditional semi-scotch brick “3 bag oven”, which has a capacity to bake an astonishing 300 loaves at a time. “It’s the magic of the wood fire oven. The oven’s 170 years old, we use it every day, the pastries all go through that,” he said. INDUSTRY FEATURE: WOTIF AWARDS
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