Taiwan - Baozi

Background
Taiwan has only been separate from mainland China for a little over 60 years. It's cuisine is greatly influenced by middle China. Japanese influence is also prevalent as it was a Japanese possession for the first half of the 20th century.
Our research for Taiwan was a little backwards. I started by emailing my former Wing Chun instructor and asked him what he ate when he lived there. His response was you tiao served with hot soy milk. You tiao are deep-fried dough, very similar to a cruller in appearance. Unfortunately they require real deep-frying and we lack the equipment to that as safely as we would like. We then had the idea of dim sum, which seemed to be backed up by the general blogosphere, so we began looking for dim sum dishes specific to Taiwan. This search yielded no results, but we found several general books on dim sum. We decided to use Dim Sum: The Art of the Chinese Tea Lunch for our recipes and techniques about refrigeration and reheating. In the end we decided to make two different styles of steamed buns, known as baozi. The first bun is filled with ground pork, onion, and spinach. The second bun is filled with adzuki bean paste.
Adzuki is our novel ingredient for this breakfast. It is a legume that is grown through out eastern Asia. It is usually sweetened before it is eaten, and canned sweetened adzuki bean paste can be purchased ready-to-use from Asian groceries.
The process of making the bao dough takes at least 2 hours of rising and we determined that length of time to be prohibitive for starting from scratch in the morning. We decided to make and steam the buns the night before and reheat them in the morning.

Bao Dough
Dough starter

• 2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 cup lukewarm water (105-115°F)
• ½ cup sugar
• 1½ cups cake flour.

1. Mix yeast, water, and sugar.
2. Let is stand for 10 minutes.
3. Mix in the cake flour and cover the bowl.
4. Place the bowl in a warm, draft-free area for 1 hour.

Dough

• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 2 cups cake flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp shortening

1. Stir salt and vinegar into the starter.
2. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
3. Stir the dry mix into the starter mix.
4. When the mixtures are combined mix in the shortening by hand.
5. Turn the dough out on a well-floured surface and knead for 5 minutes or until it is smooth. Add more flour if needed.
6. Grease a clean bowl with some shortening and place the dough in it.
7. Let it rise in a warm draft free place for an hour.

Pork baozi filling

• 4 oz spinach
• 8 oz coarsely ground pork
• 1 scallion, thinly chopped
• 1 tbsp finely chopped cilantro
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp rice wine
• ¼ tsp sugar
• 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
• 1/8 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tbsp flour mixed with 2 tbsp water

1. Wash the spinach and shake off any excess moisture.
2. Cook the spinach in a dry sauce pan for 2-3 minutes until it is slightly wilted.
3. Squeeze as much excess water as you can from the spinach and chop it very finely.
4. Combine the spinach in a bowl with the other ingredients.

Filling the buns

1. Divide the dough into 24 evenly sized balls.
2. Cut 24 two-inch-square pieces of parchment for holding the finished buns.
3. Roll each piece of dough into a 3½ inch disk.
4. Create a little indentation with the dough in your hand.
5. Add 1-2 tbsp of filling to the center of the dough. (Start with 1 tbsp and increase the amount as you get more comfortable closing them.)
6. Seal the bun by pulling opposite sides of the disks into the center. These leaves little bulges at the corners. Pull these bulges into the center and press them together so they seal.
7. Place the seamed side up for the pork buns, and down for the adzuki buns.

Cooking and reheating

1. When preparing the steamer it is important to ensure that the boiling water does not touch the buns. We used a cake cooling rack nested in the steamer. One of the books recommended using cheese cloth to get the same effect.
2. One should determine how the buns will be arranged in the steamer before the water is boiling and take in to account that the buns will expand in the steamer.
3. Steam the buns for 12 minutes and place them on a cooling rack.
4. Serve hot, or allow to cool completely and then refridgerate. To reheat, steam for 5-6 minutes. Buns may also be frozen and re-steamed after defrosting.
5. Serve with soy sauce and chili sauce.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was very quick as by morning, almost everything was done. Grab the buns from fridge, put them in the steamer, and you are ready to go. Even the work done the night before is pretty simple, except for the actual making of the dough. Filling buns is not too difficult once you've practiced on a few.
The reheating after a night in the fridge did not affect the taste and texture of the buns very much. The buns may have had a bit more moisture fresh from their first cooking than after reheating, but I think I only noticed it because I was looking for it.
The texture of the bun is very spongy and tastes a little sweet. The pork buns had lots of flavors going on and a very tender filling. It was complimented very well by the soy and chili sauce. The adzuki buns had a much firmer filling and were sweeter. They did not go well with the sauces. (Who puts soy sauce on a red-bean bun??? –Kitty)
We put several buns in the freezer to have on hand for future use. The recipes makes lots and they reheat pretty well so they could be great for bringing to potlucks or having quick dinners on hand.