An Ayrshire bakery has been awarded title of the world’s best scotch pie — for the SECOND time.
Brownings the Bakers, which has stores across the county, scooped the coveted World Championship Scotch Pie gong today after beating 400 other pies to the prize.
It’s the second time in recent years they’ve won the accolade, with a narrow second place last year halting the family firm from another victory.
And Brownings owner John Gall was absolutely delighted with the news which was announced this afternoon.
John laughed: “People must look at me and think I’m some athlete…John Gall he’s been a world champion twice, it’s the athletic body of mine that makes us world champions for pies!”
He told Ayrshire Live: “But seriously we are all chuffed, to be fair we were very surprised to win it for the second time.
“We were runners up last year, and I was told at the time we only lost out by a very small margin.
“But to come back and win it again this year was fantastic.
“The staff are all chuffed, I’ve not actually seen a lot of them since because it’s been such a busy day.
“I’ll need to see them tomorrow morning, they all work incredibly hard, it’s absolutely excellent.
“We won it two years ago which was the last event, so we’ve been really consistent the last few years."
John admits he had to roll his sleeves up and get covered in flour this time rather than overseeing the entry.
He revealed: “I generally oversee the pies anyway, but this year I had to actually get involved in making the pies because one of the main guys got Covid on the day. I had to roll my sleeves up!”
John is chairman of Darvel FC, who head to Arbroath in the Scottish Cup this weekend, and his company also sponsors his beloved Kilmarnock FC.
He said: “All I can say is we’ve started off the week with a win, and we will hopefully finish it on winning ways with a win at Arbroath...in fact we will go for the treble, Killie to beat Dundee United!”
Brownings also won the bagged the following prizes: The Diamond Award for apple pie; Silver Award for their butter chicken pie in the hot savoury category and the Bronze Award for their vegetarian cauliflower, leek and truffle oil pie.
Alasdair Smith, chief executive of Scottish Bakers who run the competition on behalf of the bakery and butchery trades, said: “We have overcome everything Covid could throw at us this year to celebrate the best pies and as always the results do not disappoint.
”It is with great pleasure that we can announce that Brownings the Bakers has taken a prize and they can be rightly very proud of their achievements.
“We took delivery of over 400 entries this year, so to win is no small feat and to know that every winning product was lovingly made from scratch from locally sourced ingredients, freshly made daily by skilled craftspeople just goes to show the skill, creativity and hard work of each and every entrant.”
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