The BMO, one of Denmark’s most popular grab-and-go sandwiches, features on John Demetrios’ Butter Days menu, with butter “thick enough to show teeth marks”.
When Butter Days opens in Malvern on Thursday, Melbourne bakery fans will have one more FOMO item to queue for: the BMO.
“It stands for ‘bolle med ost’ or ‘bun with cheese’ in Danish,” says chef and baker John Demetrios, who won the Dessert Masters reality TV show last year and has worked in Scandinavia. “The BMO is so simple, but [it’s] the best … when you’re hopping around Copenhagen. It’s what people judge a bakery on.”
At Butter Days, nutty khorasan flour is used to make the chewy sourdough roll, which is spread with cultured butter thick enough to show teeth marks, filled with two slices of gruyere cheese, and seasoned with pink salt flakes.
Demetrios will open the business with wife Martina Cissig Demetrios, a front-of-house professional who may have looked after you at Embla, Cumulus Inc. or Morning Market.
Demetrios’ first food job was at Baker’s Delight in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, but he’s best known for his work as a fine-dining pastry chef at hatted restaurants including Vue de Monde and South Yarra’s Omnia.
He also led patisserie for legendary French chef Pierre Koffmann at London restaurant Koffmann’s, and was head pastry chef at two Michelin-starred Oaxen Krog in Stockholm.
He won Dessert Masters with complex dishes such as a cardamom-infused white chocolate cremeux filled with rhubarb salted caramel, coated in a fig-flavoured chocolate shell, served with fig-leaf ice-cream and dressed with crystallised fennel fronds. Oh, and don’t forget the lemon myrtle bubbles.
The $100,000 prize money has been ploughed into Butter Days, but the new business will take a different direction with its offerings.
‘I want this place to be warm and welcoming, [somewhere] you can come all the time.’
John Demetrios
“We’re leaning towards rustic and natural and everything is geared to flavour,” says Demetrios, who says his cheffiest move will be putting up a classic tarte tatin.
“We want to keep the offering fluid and build trust, so people know that whenever they come, everything will be good.”
The husband-and-wife team have turned a dim Greek restaurant into a bright shop with a communal high table at the front, a pastry-laden display in the middle, and a huge marble baking bench at the back. There’s coffee, too.
Butter Days will use house-baked bread to make a range of sandwiches such as a pretzel bun with pastrami, hot mustard and egg salad, but it will not sell individual loaves.
Demetrios was thrilled to overhear locals speculate about the new crew brewing on busy Glenferrie Road. “I want this place to be warm and welcoming, [somewhere] you can come all the time.”
Another signature product is the sunshine bun: a sweet, round pastry with a sunny custard centre that ties into the bakery’s upbeat branding. Based on a Norwegian solboller, Demetrios’ version is precise but approachable, an easy one-hander.
“I tried making it fancier with icings and brulee, but I felt it was just distracting,” he says.
After trying many, many Melbourne croissants, Demetrios reckons his is different (and better) because it’s made with panela sugar, and a sourdough boosted by yeast.
“We’ll be baking croissants through the day,” he says. “If it’s not fresh out of the oven, it doesn’t have a chance of being the best croissant.”
Open Thu-Sun
209 Glenferrie Road, Malvern, butterdaysbakery.com.au
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