Bourke Street Bakery celebrates 21 years with guide to its signature sausage roll

Living through a bakery golden age that we are makes it difficult to comprehend that when Sydney’s Bourke Street Bakery opened in 2004 on the Surry Hills street that gave it its name, quality sourdough wasn’t available in every Melbourne and Sydney suburb.

It was also a challenge to find high-grade pies and sausages rolls, so when people heard both were available at the tiny inner-east corner shop, they drove from everywhere to buy the goods.

In fact, years after, people were still making the trek. “Rain, hail or shine, the queue outside Bourke Street Bakery never abates,” Good Food wrote in 2013.

“Early risers line the pavement for dense almond croissants, while the sausage rolls – pork and fennel, or perhaps lamb, harissa and almond – have their own cultish following. And let’s not even talk about the queues on Sundays.”

Fast-forward to 2026 and founders David McGuinness and Paul Allam have 13 Sydney stores and two in New York. The first international shop opened in 2019 in Manhattan’s midtown.

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“When I take a moment and think back to Surry Hills, it’s amazing, it feels a bit weird being here,” Allam told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2018 from the construction site in New York.

This year the bakery celebrates 21 years – an impressive milestone in Australia’s fickle hospitality scene. Also this year came the release of the 14th printing of its 2007-launched cookbook Bourke Street Bakery, which has sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide and been translated into Danish, Swedish, German and Russian.

In the first line in the original book’s foreword, McGuinness and Allam describe the bakery as “small, rustic, homely and timeless”. While the small part isn’t true any more, they reckon the other ideas “have held their own”.

“Bourke Street Bakery has always felt like a community bakery, and in some parts of Sydney where there’s an actual street named Bourke Street, people often think it’s the only one. We love when people say that!” they write in the 21st-anniversary edition.

Bourke Street Bakery happened because regulars wanted to replicate their signature dishes. “We were excited to be part of the Sydney and Australian food landscape, and soooo many people had asked us for the iconic pork and fennel sausage roll recipes and our heartbreaking creme brulee tart that it was time to put it in print. There would be more inspiration and recipes down the track but the magic in those early recipes still endures,” they write.

The pork and fennel sausage roll is still a hot seller in 2026. McGuinness and Allam say the trick to making a good sausage roll is using quality meat from a premium butcher, fresh flavourings and great puff pasty. “Rolling these savoury pastries by hand also helps.”

They knew people would like them but they didn’t anticipate how popular they’d be. “Sydneysiders are addicted to them.”

Images and text from Bourke Street Bakery by Paul Allam and David McGuinness, photography by Alan Benson. Murdoch Books RRP $49.99.

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