Steaming Bun without Filling

In north China, bread or something made with flour is more popular than rice on kitchen table. For example, I won’t miss rice if I don’t have it for a week, but I definately will miss something made with flour. And this is why you see me posting food made with flour a lot.

Ingredients:

wheat flour, yeast, sugar, salt, oil.

Methods:

1. Soak sugar and yeast into warm water, let the mixture sit for 5 – 10 minutes, let the yeast melt, and bubbles come up on the surface.

You don’t need  lots of sugar, I normally do same amount of sugar as yeast.

                

2. Pour flour into a bowl, add little cooking oil, tiny bit salt, then add yeast mixture into the bowl, form everything into a dough. Add more warm water if needed.

I know lots of people would say the flour brand or type doesn’t matter, you can get the same result. But I do like this brand better, and I always use bread flour instead of all purpose flour.

3. Coat the dough with cooking oil, keep it covered, then let it sit for at least 30 minutes, or until dough gets bigger.

4. Reform the dough, try to get as much air as you can out of the dough. then seperate the dough into small pieces.

5. Roll each piece into a smooth shape, put into the steaming tray. Then let it sit for about 20 minutes.

6. Pour cold water into steamer, heat it up with medium high heat with all the trays on. Turn heat into medium when water begin boiling. Cook for 15 – 20 minutes depends on the bun size.

7. Let the steamer sit for 5 minutes after cooking, then take the buns out, let them cool off.

8. Buns can be served warm, and can be reheat with microwave oven or steamer after cool.