All Hail Bread and Butter. Here Are 10 of Sydney’s Best

Let’s be honest, the bread and butter course is always the best. And some venues are a cut above the rest.

There are plenty of excellent dining rooms serving standout rolls and slices from our city’ s best bakers – star carbs arriving from the likes of Iggy’s, Pioik, AP and Baker Bleu. But we’re here for the house-made bread (otherwise the carb crown jewel that is Fontana’s volcanic garlic-butter roll would be on this list).

Some of these serves don’t technically come with butter. But the oil and sour cream they arrive with instead still do the trick. So get down to a few of these Sydney restaurants and remember: the best thing since sliced bread is a whole, warm roll just for you.

Bread basket, AP Bread & Wine

Dougal Moffat goes above and beyond. He’s giving diners at AP’s Darlo branch a whole basket of house-made bread – honestly, it’s a party bag for adults.

The dark, glossy-topped brioche pull-apart rolls will likely steal the show, but then there are the chewier seed-crusted country rolls. And a slice of focaccia. And a breadstick. On a second dinner, there was a twisted, tomatoey number, too.

Whatever mix you get, it’ll be good. Especially with a generous helping of chef and co-owner Mat Lindsay’s whipped garlic butter – all deep and umami and beautiful.

Khorasan, Aalia

Exec chef Paul Farag isn’t a professional baker, so his table bread – a bubbly, charred khorasan – “breaks all the rules”.

“We mix all the ingredients with iced water and olive oil until a smooth dough forms,” he says. “Then it’s shaped into balls and placed straight in the fridge for at least 24 hours. It’s baked from cold in our oven.”

The little pita-like domes are spread across every table, where they arrive with a dish of sunflower-yellow Rio Vista olive oil. “As a Middle Eastern restaurant, extra-virgin olive oil plays a central role in our food. We serve it with a blend of Greek and Middle Eastern varietals that reflect my heritage.”

It’s good on its own, after a dunk in the oil or swiped through your meal’s saucy leftovers.

Rice bread with sambal butter, Island Radio

Island Radio chef Andy Wirya’s impossibly aerated bread, with its deeply golden crust, is almost 100 per cent Japanese rice. And it’s as much a textural experience as a flavourful one.

First, the rice is soaked overnight at room temperature, activating the natural bacteria in the grain. It’s drained then blended into a smooth puree with yeast, grapeseed oil, sugar, salt and water, which activates the yeast. The batter is proofed at 40 degrees for 10 minutes, then baked at 195 degrees for 40 minutes.

The bread is bolstered by sambal-spiked whipped butter, and does a standout job mopping up saucy plates from the wider menu. The bread is free of butter and egg – so, if you go without the sambal butter, it’s vegan (but you shouldn’t, if you can help it).

Langos with sour cream, Corner 75

This fried little round is a must-order at the recently updated Randwick restaurant. According to the team, “there is no dish more Hungarian than the almighty langos”. A white-flour dough is cold-fermented overnight then fried to order. Langos arrive golden and glistening on the plate, schmicked up with caraway salt and garlic oil.

They are fluffier than your eyes would have you believe and best eaten with a sizeable swipe of sour cream and chives.

The new custodians of the neighbourhood beauty come from Sixpenny and Baba’s Place, with clear venue cross-pollination throughout the menu. The little dish of house-made sour cream borrows the starter culture used for the Baba’s yoghurt.

Feeling fancy? Add roe.

Pumpkin bread with cultured butter, Firedoor

Trust Lennox Hastie to take even the bread course to new heights. Every day delivers a new bread serve at his fiery Surry Hills restaurant. On Saturdays, the 36-hour fermented sourdough – made especially for Firedoor by Pioik Bakery, using an 18-year-old starter – is spiked with roasted pumpkin, sunflower seeds, nigella, turmeric and honey. The loaves are baked in Hastie’s oven, still warm from the Friday night’s service.

There’s house-made butter, of course. “We source cream from Warrnambool, Victoria with 40 per cent butterfat, which we then smoke lightly with ironbark,” Hastie tells Broadsheet. “It is then matured with our culture with a milk kefir over 36 hours, before being chilled and churned into butter.”

It arrives with native honey, and sprouted black barley that’s been grilled in the embers.

Shio kombu roll with seaweed butter, Ito

The pull-apart at this Crown Street Italo-Japanese restaurant is tiny but mighty – a brioche-meets-shokupan that’s a long-time top-seller.

Every day before lunch, the dough – which includes a tangzhong roux imbued with shio kombu, eggs and butter – is shaped into rolls, squeezed snug into a tray then baked. Each roll is steamed to order, brushed with butter then flecked with flakes of sea salt.

Steam rushes out of the little rolls as you tear them open, ready for the umami-packed, green-speckled seaweed butter on the side. “It’s a mix of shio kombu, aonori, confit garlic and cultured butter,” head chef Erik Ortolani tells Broadsheet. “A play on classic Italian garlic bread.”

Flatbread, Bessie’s

The Bar Copains pros went big when they opened Bessie’s and Alma’s just up the road. And the grilled bread – a pita-naan-flatbread hybrid – is stupidly good.

Sourdough, fresh yeast and a trio of Wholegrain Milling’s organic flours make up the dough. Before cooking, rounds of dough are brushed with olive oil then cooked on one side in a pan. It’s flipped onto a red-hot grill, where it chars up.

A punchy, herby butter – packed with confit garlic – is brushed over the top, then a shower of chopped chives and Aleppo pepper to finish.

Kade paan, Lankan Filling Station

When O Tama Carey switched out Lankan Filling Station’s lauded hoppers for bread and butter, people were upset. But once you get into her kade paan – “shop bread” in Sinhalese – you’ll be sad no longer.

AP Bread makes the simple Sri Lankan staple in-house. The white dough is proofed; painted with a slurry of butter, flour and oil; then baked. It comes out of the oven with a deeply golden, distinct crust.

Thick slices arrive hot off the grill, after several rounds of curry-leaf butter (Carey’s “special magic flavour”) are painted on top.

Beer bread with cultured butter, Odd Culture

This Odd Culture slice is slightly sticky and slightly sour – and absolutely ace on its own or with the house-made butter. The sourdough’s personality comes from Young Henry’s Newtowner, which starts off the two-day process with local flour and a sourdough culture.

It’s left to rise, cold-fermented overnight and then baked pre-service.

The full-flavoured butter accompanying the bread is special in its own right, too. Cream is fermented with a cheese culture, then whipped until the fat solids separate from the buttermilk. Then it’s salted, of course.

Focaccia, Paski Vineria Popolare

This fluffy slab seems simple, but it wins because it’s been created with precision. First there’s a careful mix of baker’s flour and tipo 1 flour, with the increased bran and wheat germ in the tipo giving the flavour more depth and character.

Then there’s careful hydration. “The process starts with a biga, a low-hydration pre-ferment that we leave to develop for about 18 hours before mixing it with the remaining ingredients,” Paski co-owner and chef Enrico Tomelleri says. “The final dough sits at around 78 per cent hydration.”

Butter is added for a gentle nuttiness in the final bake. A pair of slices arrive at the table with Le Coste olive oil, which comes from the groves on the volcanic soil near Lake Bolsen.