Chinese Steam buns- Man tou or Pau

April 29, 2008 | By rosalina In Asian cuisines, Recipes |

Chinese steamed bun, also know as “Man tou” or ‘Pau’ meaning ‘packet’

Man tou or steam bun is steeped with the Chinese cuisine since… oh I don’t know, the start of the Chinese food culture. Anyways, its history goes far and long and has been a main staple in Chinese cuisine, besides rice. ‘Pau’ is made of processed or bleached wheat and rice flour, water and leavening agents. At home, to achieve that soft, light and fluffy texture, milk is used in replace of water for the recipe. White mantou was consider a luxury in pre-industrial China, as bleach white flour was more expensive then.

Was missing the great taste of a freshly made Chinese steam bun, better know as ‘pau’, I decided to surfed online to find the best recipe. Here is one I tried, with a little variation to make the dough sweeter.

Pau Ingredients A

400 gm bleached all-purpose flour(remove 4 tbsp and replace with 4 tbsp of Wheat starch - tung mein fun)
240 ml water
1 ½ tsp instant yeast.

Pau Ingredients B

100 gm bleached all-purpose flour( remove 1 tbsp and replace with 1 tbsp of Wheat starch - tung mein fun)
50 gm sugar
10 gm butter or vegetable oil
1 ¼ tsp baking powder

FILLING:

600 gm pork
4 stalks of spring onion
15 gm young ginger
50 gm shallots(sliced and fried till golden)

Seasoning:

1 1/8 tsp salt
1 ½ tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soya sauce
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp msg
100 cc stock

Method:

For pau:

Mix ingredients A together.
Knead until smooth and elastic.
Let it rise for 40 mins
Mix dough from method 1 with ingredients B. and knead until well blended.
Cut into equal portions and roll all the portions into a very thin circle before wrapping in filling. Wrap the first circle and so forth.
Let it rise for 20 minutes.
Steam for 15 minutes.

For Filling: