Making Baozi

I bought a steamer recently, one that's made of stainless steel, not the bamboo kind. A steamer has always been a very important piece of kitchen gadget in my house because my Dad's favorite food is Mom's steamed buns and baozi (steamed buns with meat filling). I have been eager to make baozi and this past Sunday I did! I grew up watching my mom making steamed buns from scratch so I know it takes a long time. Well, for me, it turned into a day-long affair!! Although I did take breaks while patiently waiting for the yeast dough to rise.


The rised dough. I decided to use 50% whole wheat flour and 50% white flour in case you're wondering about the odd color. This combo turned out well for taste and skin integrity.

The filling, pork and veggies. I used white Chinese cabbage and also mustard greens for the added intense green color.

Ta da!! The cooked result several hours later. They are not white like my mom's, the brown specks are due to the whole wheat flour. The round-shaped ones are prettier but I quickly found out that the moon-shaped baozi can contain up to 30% more filling so I made more of those. More filling = more taste.


Uncooked dumplings. I started with 2 lbs. of ground pork, which makes a LOT of filling, so I made over 50 dumplings and will freeze the leftover filling. I would have made more but became too tired. I used ~30% whole wheat flour in the dumpling dough. From past experiments, I found that 25-30% of WWF will not change the taste, texture and integrity of the dumplings much so I'm sticking with that. More WWF will make the dumplings too grainy-tasting, not to mention the skin cracks during cooking.

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As for the baozi, for first-time making it, I give myself a 80%. There's a sweetness to the dough skin which did not go entirely with my veggie and pork filling. The recipe for the dough is, afterall, for char-sui bao, which is a sweet and tangy BBQ pork filling. I will try using an all-meat filling next time, it should work better with the "sweet" skin. Or maybe I'll add more salt to the dough to even out the sweetness? I know the sugar is important b/c that's what the yeast eats. Hubby liked it but he's more of a dumpling person, it turns out.