This one’s ingredient list reads almost like a shopping list for a gourmet grocer: Western Plains pork, Pepe Saya butter, and an egg wash made with Burd eggs and St David Dairy milk. The team here adds herbs, fennel seeds and sourdough breadcrumbs, then pipes it into the pastry and wraps each roll by hand. Served with chilli jam.

At this popular spot (and its Thornbury sibling), finely minced pork is combined with fennel and fresh oregano, with a fat-water ratio that keeps it moist and light after baking. It’s wrapped in puff pastry laminated with Belgian butter and baked fresh daily – the whole process takes up to 24 hours from end to end.

It’s no wonder that one of Melbourne’s best pie shops also excels at snag rolls. Pastry is made with vegetable fat instead of butter, and it’s wrapped around a moreish mix that’s 90 per cent meat. The remaining 10 per cent consists of tasty cheese and veg, plus some fresh parsley.

Falco’s hefty 15-centimetre roll has a crispy, crackled exterior from the all-butter pastry. Inside is an aromatic base of confit fennel mixed with pork mince, onion, fennel seed and fennel pollen. The result is a moist and juicy filling enveloped by ultra-flakey pastry.

Classic, organic beef rolls are the standard issue, but this bakery has been known to whip up the some inventive one-off. Take the char siu roll for instance, a Chinese-inspired number made with organic pork and a sticky marinade of black-bean sauce, honey, fresh ginger and a boatload of Asian spices.

Grab a tray and shuffle down the cafeteria-style counter for hot vegan brekkies, daily salads and desserts. Or hit the vegan deli and carvery for vegan cold cuts, sandwiches, pantry items and more.

As this popular family-run bakery, cafe and grocer shows, the classic Aussie sausage roll also lends itself well to Middle Eastern flavours. Minced lamb is mixed with currants, haloumi, roasted almonds, spices and parsley, then wrapped in pastry, topped with sesame seeds and baked.

A fresh batch of these best-selling rolls is made by hand at 5am every day. They’re packed full of beef, carrots, potato and onion, and served with house-made tomato relish. The generous, quarter-kilo portion can be a meal on its own.

This homey bakery is best known for its cakes and pies, but the classic sausage rolls are equally worth visiting for.

Crowned Victoria’s supreme snag roll at last year’s instalment of the Victorian Baking Show in Bendigo (it also won in the gourmet beef pie category). With locations in Boronia, Kyneton and Springvale, this bakery is one to hit the road for.