Time: All told about 4 or 5 hours but active time is much less
Quantity: 16 buns


Ingredients

  • 500g All-purpose flour
  • 250g Water
  • 2 tbsp Sugar
  • 1 tsp Active dried yeast
  • 300g Pork
  • 1 Green onion
  • 1 inch Ginger
  • A small amount Spices (casia bark, szechuan pepper corns, black pepper corns, etc.)

Recipe:

  1. Make the dough by dissolving a tablespoon of sugar and active dried yeast into the warm water. Form a 50 percent hydration dough and knead for 10 minutes.
  2. Let the dough rise until doubled, if taking too long increase the amount of yeast. Realistically should take about 90 minutes to 2 hours.
  3. Soak the spices in 1/2 cup boiled water along with the green onion and ginger.
  4. Whichever pork cut you are using should be relatively fatty. Maybe between 10 and 20 percent fat. Mince and grind by hand until the consistency of ground pork.
  5. Mix ground pork with light soy sauce, salt, sugar, corn starch, white pepper powder, and liao jiu. Slowly mix in filtered spice water until a springy consistency, about five minutes. Folk wisdom says to only go in one direction. Mix in a tablespoon of sesame oil at the end.
  6. Roll dough flat to remove air and roll up into a tight log. Cut pieces of 50g each and cover so they do not dry out.
  7. Roll each piece flat and bring each corner in turn to the center, forming a tight ball.
  8. Roll each piece flat again when ready to wrap. Press down with your palm evenly and roll the edges thin, keeping light pressure on rolling pin while moving towards the centre, and pressing down while moving out. Keep the centre maybe two times the thickness of the edges.
  9. Wrap 20g of meat filling in with the baozi.
  10. Steam for 15 minutes once steam starts to escape the basked.
  11. Let stand 5 minutes after steaming.

Notes

Kneading the dough is actually very important here. With less, three to five minutes for example, the baozi fall after being steamed. No good.