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