Recipe from Jessica’s Su Good Sweets. I used live yeast which I bought from an Italian grocery store and added 1 whole egg instead of only using half.

Baked Char Siu Bao Dough

~3/4 tbsp of live yeast (or One 1/4-ounce envelope active dry yeast)
1/3 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of warm/hot water
2 cups bread flour
1 large egg, beaten
3 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp salt

1) In a large bowl, mix together yeast, sugar and water. Let sit for ~30 to 60 mins to activate the yeast. To speed things up, you can put the bowl under another container filled with hot water (to achieve a double boiler effect). Make sure you don’t let the yeast mixture touch the water if it’s really hot or you might killed with the heat. The yeast mixture is ready when you see bubbles and/or brown foams on the surface.

2) Add the egg and oil, stir it a little bit with a fork. Mix the salt and flour together in another bowl. Add the dry mixture into the yeast mixture 1/3 at a time while using your fingers to do the stirring.

3) Start kneading the dough. When it comes together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and continue kneading. Use a spatula or a dough scrapper to scrap up the dough from the board and keep sprinkling flour on the work surface. Knead for about 15 minutes. The dough should be smooth and elastic. Try to stretch the dough while you knead. Cover and let rise for 3-4 hours until it triples in size. I usually leave it over night and bake the next morning. If you want to speed it up, heat the oven at 150F, then turn it off and put the covered dough in the oven (make sure the contain is oven proof).

4) When it’s ready punch dough down and turn it out on a floured surface if it is still a bit sticky. Knead it for a couple of minutes and then roll the dough into 12 inches long. Divide the dough into 12 one-inch pieces. If it is hard to roll it into a log, you can try what I do. I divide the dough in half, then divide each half into half again. Now you got 4 pieces. Cut each piece into three equal pieces to get 12 pieces. Keep any dough that is not being used covered to avoid it from drying. Flatten one piece of dough into a circle (use a rolling pin or just flatten it between your palms) and fill it with 1.5 tbsp of char siu bao filling. Gather the side and pinch together to close. Place seam side faced down on a parchment lined baking sheet. Repeat for the rest of the dough, placing them about 1.5 – 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.

5) Once all the dough is filled, cover and let rise for 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare egg wash by mixing a beaten egg with 1 – 2tbsp of milk (or water, I used milk since I can make scrambled eggs with the left over egg wash). Spritz each bao with water and brush with the egg wash. Bake the bao for 15-20 mins, turning the baking sheet once half way through the baking. They are ready when they are golden on top.

Tip: I find that the bao turns golden really fast in my oven, about 10-12 minutes. You might want to keep an eye on them when you bake them for the first time.

Here’s a picture of the char siu bao fresh out of the oven!

So after that wok incident (remember my dad burned it…), I took a slight turn and made baked char siu baos instead. As you can see from the picture, they looked pretty good don’t they? ~^__^~

Well, they might look good but there’s one flaw. I over baked the bottom ~>_<~ I tried to decrease the baking time and lower the temperature but they are still too brown for my liking. Anyways, I won’t give up! Check out these cute little baos before they get a tan in the oven.

The interesting thing I learned from this experiment is that bread flour makes a lot of difference. I used all-purpose flour the first time and it turned out really well, just a bit a too tough (not airy enough). So the second time I used bread flour. Turned out wonderfully! It’s so soft and airy. The top is in a light golden colour.

Another thing I tried is using a sugar glaze after baking. Sometimes when you buy baked buns at the Asian bakery, they have this sticky, sweet glaze on top. So I tried doing that and it was a little too sticky and sweet even though it’s really just a little sugar plus water.

I find it really hard to bake bread during the weekdays because of the time it takes to rise. I’ll probably try more on weekends. Anyways, I’ll post the recipe for the bao soon!~

So after doing a “char siu bao” (bbq pork bun, the ones you see at dim sum) in Google, I found a few recipes that looked promising. Out of about 3 that caught my eyes, I picked the one that seemed the easiest for my first experiment.

To the left is my first char siu bao {csb}. It looked a bit squished because I had to pull the bun apart so I can take a photo of the inside. Anyways, after i got home last night, I started off by preparing the filling. The sauce is pretty simple to make: water, soya sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, ketchup, corn starch, dash of white pepper, cooking wine and sesame oil. I used hot water to dissolve the corn starch so there won’t be any lumps then set it aside while I work on cutting up the char siu (bbq pork). I’m a slow chopper so it took me about 10-15 mins to cut up about 2 cups of the pork. The recipe actually asked for a bit of onions too but I’ve never seen onions in the csb from the restaurants so I left it out (plus I don’t think I can stand another 5 mins of chopping). It is a good idea to use a non-stick pan to cook the filling as the sauce thickens up and might stick to the pan. After heating the pork for about 2 mins, I added in some wine, then the sauce mixture I prepared earlier. It thickened up almost instantly, probably because of the corn starch in the mixture. I cooked it for another 3 minutes or so before removing it from the heat and tossing it with some sesame oil for flavour. It smelled really nice! After it cools, it’ll thicken more and are ready for use. To speed up the cooling, I set it in a cold water bath.

For the buns, the ingredients are equally simple: flour, sugar, baking powder, water, milk, and oil. Since the recipe was in Chinese, I had a bit of trouble understanding one part on the dough making and this probably caused the first screw up. Anyways, I did what I think is logical (in terms of dough making) and got the dough together. After letting it rest for about 1 hour, and dividing the dough into smaller portions, I rolled out each one and filled it with the pork filling. Once the water is boiling in the wok, I added the buns in there with a steamer and steamed it for 20 minutes. Here’s another mistake: for the first batch, I didn’t know that the timer should start after the water reboils (aka when you see steam coming out) so the buns wasn’t as puffy as the second batch.

Here are a few more things that I noticed and will need to improve in the next trial:

1. The dough has this pale yellow colour, I’m not sure where it is from since I’m using all-purpose flour, sugar and milk which is all white in colour. I think it might be the oil? I will try to use a lighter oil next time (will need to do some hunting around the house/store).
2. The steam makes the top (crust) of the buns very dry and tough. The ones you get at the restaurants are very soft and sometimes will stick to your fingers. The crust is very thin, but will need to improve on the texture abit.
3. The dough did not rise that much (partly because I might have misunderstood a small part of the recipe) and it’s not as fluffy as the “real” csb. Next time I’ll try to make it with yeast and see if that’d help. Or maybe adjust the amount of flour to make it lighter?

I’m giving this char siu bao a 7.5/10 because I didn’t like how the dough turned out. I’m going to use the same filling for the next attempt since this one seems pretty good.

CSB Experiment: The dead wok story
My dad killed the wok because before I add the last batch of buns for steaming, he said he’d help me add more water to the wok first (to ensure that you don’t run out of water since they evaporates as you steam. I asked him if he was sure he added the water and he said yes. So I loaded the steamer with the buns, set the timer for 20 mins when I see steam coming out then went to my room to get ready for bed. I came back to the kitchen 20 mins later and found that there’s no more steam coming out of the wok and the bottom is bright red. There was no more water and the heat is melting the bottom (or almost melting it). The buns were done but it got this brownish colour at the bottom (it looked like it was baked) from the heat. The wok is destroyed so now I have to wait till mom gets a new one before I can start steaming again.