Laravel css using the elixir function not working properly on xampp

I created a versioned css file using:

elixir(function(mix) {
    mix.sass('demo.scss')
    .version('css/demo.css');
});

the file is under public/build/demo-34f5737738.css, according to the documentation the file should be linked this way:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ elixir("css/demo.css") }}"

however the stylesheet is not being applied when running in Xampp, but it's working when I start a server via command: php artisan serve. Any idea of why this is happening, or does Xampp needs a special setup before working with Laravel. Thanks!

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