Maison Emil Paris: Steamed buns with meat filling

Known throughout Southeast Asia, the banh bao (or baozi/pao in Chinese), a fluffy soft steamed bun with a sweet or savoury filling, is eaten as snack all day long in Vietnam. In China it's more common to eat it at breakfast and the dough is much sweeter. In Vietnam the filling often consists of ground pork, fish sauce, onion, water chestnut, woodear mushroom, a piece of hard boiled egg and a slice of Chinese sausage. In Hong Kong it's often filled with barbecue pork and the size is much smaller, whereas the Vietnamese version is bigger due to a bigger filling size.

My French husband loves the Hong Kong version of baozi for its sweet barbecue pork filling and the sweet dough. I prefer the Vietnamese version as I am not too crazy about the sweet Chinese barbecue pork. But my favourite bun is sweet bun with black sesame seeds filling from Din Tai Fung in KL & Singapore. Oh My God!

It's common to use the low gluten wheat flour (blanched), but in Norway we could not find this flour, so my mom uses regular flour (all-purpose), fresh yeast and water, but it doesn't give you that very white "bleached" colour associated with the bao dough. Some recipes call for a mixture of regular wheat flour and rice flour (maybe for the colour?). Other recipes call for self-raising flour, milk (or milk powder).

My bao dough recipe:

Yeast solution - 5min
20gr fresh yeast (or 7 gr dry yeats) - fresh yeast gives best result
2 tbl spoons warm water (b/w 38-45 c degrees)
1 tbl spoon sugar (15gr)

Dough mix
500gr flour (since I live in France I use organic T65)
2,5 dl luke warm milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
60 gr sugar
1 tbl spoon veg oil

Baking powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tbl psoon COLD water

Method
1. Make yeast solution by mixing water, sugar and together with a spoon and let rest 5 min in a warm place (or until bubbly)
2. Mix dough - dry ingredients only (except baking powder solution)
3. Add yeast solution to the luke warm milk
4. Add liquid and oil to the dough
5. Mix/knead low speed 5 min
5. Let dough rest 40 min in the mixing bowl covered with a kitchen towel
6. After 40 min, mix 30-60 sec to punch out air
7. Mix baking powder with COLD water until dissolved
8. Add the baking powder solution to the dough and mix/knead 5 min
9. Cover and let rise 30 min
10. Take out dough and roll a log
11. Divide in pieces; 75gr for big bao, 60 gr for medium size, 40gr for sweet bao
12. Add your favourite filling and fold (many youtube videos on how to fold - here is one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U56lTym-Xs
13. Place upside down on a steamer and steam for 10 min (or longer for thicker and bigger bao)