Steamed Buns and my guide to finding affordable cookbooks on Chinese cooking

Rémi the breadmaker has hijacked my bao project. He loves to eat Chinese steamed buns so much. So he couldn't resist not making them when he heard about my intention to do so.

I have two steamed bun recipes, but eventually chose the one from "Chinese Desserts 100" written by Winnie jie (I trust the Cantonese to be good dim sum makers). I bought it a bookstore in Hong Kong's airport while on transit. Rémi's Mandarin is certainly still as good as my Malay, so he will not be able to read the Chinese instructions. But fret not, like many of my Chinese cookbooks, the recipes are presented in both English and Chinese.

It's a paradox, but bilingual cookbooks that require the extra effort of translating recipes are actually cheaper than English ones. Even the Chinese version of cookbooks by celebrity chefs are much cheaper than the original English versions found in the same bookstore.

Anyway, I am not too interested in cookbooks by celebrity chefs nowadays but prefer more affordable ones by seemingly anonymous homecooks. To cater to the growing English market, more and more Chinese and Malaysian cookbooks are bilingual. It doesn't matter if you don't understand a single Chinese word. Just let yourself be guided by the accompanying deliciously shot food photos and be tolerant of the less than perfect English on the recipes. The recipes work!

So for $10-$20, you have a wider range of cookbooks on all kinds of Chinese, Malay/Indonesian and Peranakan cuisines to choose from than if you stick to purely English cookbooks.


Steamed bun (包)
Makes about 16 small or 10 medium buns

Basic bun dough:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon yeast
2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon lard or vegetable oil
5/8 cup fresh milk (warm)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon oil for greasing

Filling:
we're less imaginative this time, being our first bun-making experiment, so we use ready-made red bean paste bought from the Asian grocery store. But Rémi is already dreaming of making nutella buns...I prefer traditional fillings, like lotus paste, minced pork, chicken, vegetables...will hope to try egg custard fillings on the recipe someday too.


To make the dough, put flour, yeast, sugar and lard into a bowl. Add warm milk and mix well. Pour onto a countertop and knead for about 5 minutes into a soft dough. If the dough is too dry, add more warm milk or water.

Grease a deep bowl, Put in dough and cover with a damp cloth and set aside to let it prove for about one and half hours, until it has doubled in size.

Beat the dough forcefully with the palm once to squeeze out the air, put it on the countertop and roll flat into a cross shape. Sprinkle baking powder on top and knead for a while. Set aside to ferment for about 30 minutes.

Divide the dough into 16 portions. Do so by rolling it into a sausage and cutting it into equal parts. Roll each portion into a ball, flatten and wrap in the filling. Line each bun with a small square of paper.

Steam for 10 minutes. To prevent water from dripping onto the buns and affecting its look, cover the buns loosely with baking paper. Serve hot.

Make Bread with Rice Cooker

I love my rice cooker. It's amazing how many things you can cook with it, beside simple plain rice. Steam, stew, boil (for steamboat), and now bread!

Trust the Japanese to come up with this. Rémi tried and it worked!



Although our bread didn't rise to a perfect round, but it tasted soft and freshly good nonetheless.

To do this, you need to have, say an afternoon free. The actual kneading takes probably just half an hour, but you need time for the dough to rise, and to cook very slowly in the rice cooker. We reckon it's faster to pop the dough into the oven, but good for those who doesn't have an oven (aka my sister).

A note on the proportion of liquid used. We were initially confused by the unit of measurement used here -- cc. Found that it actually refers to cubic centimetres which is equivalent to millilitres (ml). Which is different from centilitres which the French are so used to.

And last weekend, we finally found a store selling slotted cutting boards for bread. Now we have a dedicated board for cutting our bread, and more importantly, collecting all those crumbs before they run all over the kitchen.

Rye bread and why it should be left to the professional

Yesterday was certainly a busy breadmaking day. Aside from Pizza, Rémi also finally put his rye flour to good use. My conclusion is, unless you have a bread machine, it's more worthwhile letting the baker earned that 5 bucks.

It's just too time-consuming. Three rounds of kneading, and two rounds of glazing, it took half the afternoon and night to complete the full course of making the bread, that due to inexperience, has rooms for improvement (although I would say that his rye bread is excellent, given that it's his first time making it).

I've grown up on soft white bread and love the softness of those traditional white bread loaf you spread your kaya and butter on. Not the commercial square white bread you use for making those triangular sandwiches. So it took me a while to get used to those harder country bread that the French loves.

The French takes much pride in their bread, almost like they do with their cheese. In France, it seems that you can't call yourself a boulanger unless you have some certification, and artisan bread are highly valued.

For the undeterred, I reproduce the recipe from the "Making Fresh Bread" cookbook.

Ryebread
Makes 1 large loaf

450g rye flour
225g strong white bread flour plus extra for dusting
2 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp easy blend dried yeast
425ml lukewarm water
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 egg white for glazing (we used milk)

Sift the flours and salt together into a bowl. Add sugar, yeast and stir to mix. Make a well in the centre and pour in the lukewarm water and oil. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together, then knead with your hands until it leaves the side of the bowl.

Turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes, until elastic and smooth.

Brush a bowl with oil. Shape the dough into a ball, put in the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave to rise in a warm place for 2 hours, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Brush a baking sheet with oil. Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and knock back with your fist, then knead for a further 10 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball, put it on a prepared baking sheet and cover with the damp tea towel. Leave to rise in a warm place for a further 40 minutes, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 190C. Beat the egg white with 1 tsp of water in a bowl (if you're using it for glazing). Bake loaf for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven and brush the top with the glaze. Return to oven and bake for a further 20 minutes.

Brush the top of the loaf with the glaze again and return to the oven for a further 20-30 minutes, until the crust is a rich brown colour and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base with your knuckles. Cool before serving.

Ying-Yang Rectangular Pizza

Pizza, along with guacamole, counts as one of the frequent dish we make when we entertain.

As usual, Rémi would be the bread-maker, ensuring that we have a crispy thin crust that we could cut easily with a pair of scissors.

And our pizza is never round. We always make a rectangular shape crust and line it on the big black oven tray. It is just perfect for feeding four persons, or two persons over two meals.

Being maker of your own pizza, you get to choose your own topping, and we normally have two sides with different flavours.

Below is our pizza dough recipe, that makes two big rectangular crust. You may consider freezing the second one for use another day. To freeze, roll out the dough to desired shape, line with baking paper, and gently roll the sheet like a scroll of paper. Use within two weeks.

Pizza dough
makes 2 big rectangular crusts

12g yeast (ready to use dried yeast)
8g salt (I guess a pinch would do)
250ml water
500g flour
50g olive oil
1/2 can tomato paste
4-5 ripe tomatoes

Sift flour. Mix flour, salt, yeast and oil. Mix with water and knead for 10 minutes. May need to add more flour if you find that the dough is too oily (or maybe reduce the quantity of oil).

Keep in the mixing bowl, covered by a damp towel, in a warm place for 60-90 minutes. Warm place could be on an open oven door, with the oven switched on at low temperature. Or beside the fridge.

The dough should have doubled in size. Knead lightly and press out the uneven pockets of air. Roll to desired thickness and shape, but the thinner, the crispier.

Place the dough on a floured tray. Spread with tomato paste on the flattened dough. Lined with slices of tomatoes all over.

Spread with your desired toppings and bake in preheated oven at 180C for about 15-20 minutes.

Topping suggestions:
Fresh mushrooms
Onions
Bacon
Olives
Anchovy
Basil leaves
Calamari (how about stir fry in sambal first?)
Prawns
Salmon
Dash of mix herbs all over
Mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese

Somehow, we are lacking in imagination when it comes to pizza toppings and always end up with the same things every time.

Black Pillow

What was meant as freshest Olive and Sun-dried Tomatoes Bread for picnic on Tulip Sunday at the Botanic Garden turned out to become a black pillow.

Everything went perfectly well, Rémi did the dough the night before, we woke up early so he can knead further. We even had time to finish baking a Pear Tart almost from scratch (with pre-made frozen dough). But things started going horribly wrong, we suddenly remembered it's the first day of daylight saving, and we're one hour behind time.

So, we quickly pushed the perfectly risen bread dough into the oven, set timer for oven to stop 40 minutes later, and went Sunday marketing/supermarketing to replenish our near empty fridge, including buying 4 different types of flour - from bread to rye to rice flour.

Two hours later, we came back, absolutely horrified at this black hard pillow. The oven did not listen to instructions and was still blasting at full heat.

Saving grace was that the inside was still soft and edible, after we broke through the blackened shell. And we managed to savage enough of the remaining leftover unburnt bread to use as breadcrumbs for our absolutely yummy homemade Ramly burger beef patty for dinner.

Freshest Pitta Bread

I bought a new cookbook Making Fresh Bread two days ago and Remi got more excited than me.

So before I had even browsed through all the pages, he has studied the recipes carefully and decided we're going to have the freshest Pitta Bread, straight from the oven for breakfast today.

Now, that's nice. He tweaked the kneading process a little bit, so that he could prepare the dough the night before, leave it to expand slowly in the fridge the whole night, wake up early to knead quickly the 2nd time, go back to sleep, then wake up to put the completed dough into the oven. And it took just 5 minutes to bake, as opposed to other breads that takes longer.

Freshest Pitta Bread
makes two breads

175g white flour (use bread flour if you have)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried yeast
1/2 tbsp olive oil
100ml lukewarm water

Sift flour and salt together into a bowl. Stir in yeast.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and lukewarm water. Stir well with wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together.

Knead with your hands until it leaves the side of the bowl. So, what does kneading mean? If you've learn pottery before, it is somewhat similar to kneading clay. Using your fingers, you try to gather the flour together and evenly distribute them into the dough. You also do this by folding the dough into half, knocking it with your fist, and repeating the steps until there's no uneven lumps of flour in the dough.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Brush the bowl with oil (so that the dough will not stick to it). Shape dough into a ball and put it into the bowl. Cover with a damp tea towel and put into fridge to rise through the night.

The dough should have doubled in volume by morning, with uneven pockets of air inside. So knead more for about 5 minutes on a lightly floured board to remove the uneven pockets of air, divide into 2 balls and leave to rise for 30 minutes to an hour, in a bowl covered with damp tea towel.

With floured hands, slightly flatten a dough ball and roll out on a lightly floured surface to an oval (somehow, he did 2 round pitta breads).

Meanwhile, put a lightly floured baking tray/sheet in oven and preheat to 230C. Transfer pitta breads to the heated trays, spacing them well apart, and bake for 5 minutes until puffed up and golden brown.

Fresh bread for breakfast.