kathyvegas

Here's scoop on bao dough. I've made (an eaten) way more of these tasty Asian versions of the American Sloppy Joe than I care to admit. Many Asian bao doughs use rice flour or a rice flour/all purpose flour blend. I find the all rice flour doughs rather difficult to work with but the lack of gluten in the flour gives the dough it's fluffy texture we enjoy. In my restaurant experience, we've found that just about ANY all purpose white bread all-purpose flour dough with a little extra added white sugar works perfectly when about 1/4 cup of the all-purpose flour is replaced with the same amount of corn starch in a standard 1-2 loaf recipe. Using a bread machine on the dough setting works like a charm.....the sky's the limit on your choice of fillings, just keep the juiciness of your filling to a minimum to reduce the "blow-out" factor from the escaping steam. You can steam or bake any bao...and parchment paper circles are the best surafce to avoid sticking...waxed paper tends to stick and lettuce leaves, while practicle, can impart an aroma to the steamed dough. We consistantly had a hard time not running out of the curried chicken bao by the end of our night service. Just a basic curried ground chicken filling--with a mango chutney thinned with sherry dipping sauce.

OHH....now that sounds absolutely fantastic! It never occured to me to deep fry them although, working in a restaurant we've thrown all sorts of things in the deep fat fryer at the end of a long night to see what happens. Mostly inedible unspeakable things happen, although we did fry the order bell one night......(note to self---drop some bao in deep fryer Thursday night).....Thank you for the idea! The latest craze in Indonesia is to deep fry freshly steamed bao -- the bao develops a thin, crisp shattering-upon-bite shell with fluffy steamed pastry and luscious meat/veg filling within. I haven't found anything like it here in the States. ←