Steamed buns, known also as mantou (饅頭), are a popular breakfast staple in Taiwan. This version of the mantou pairs traditional mantou with a hand-crafted bread blossom centerpiece.
Ingredients
- Flour 250 g
- Milk 130-140 ml
- Yeast 3g
- Sugar 30g
- Salt 1g
- If using water, 125 ml.
- If desired for use in the decorative flower ball, green onion, sesame oil, salt and ground pepper
- If desired for use in flavoring the mantou, black sesame powder or raisins to taste
Instructions
- Warm milk until it reaches 40 degrees C (104 degrees F). Typically you can accomplish this by microwaving it for about 30 seconds.
- Add yeast to the milk, stir a little and let it stand for 5 minutes.
- Mix flour with sugar and salt. Pour in milk mixture, then mix and knead into a dough. At this stage, if desired, you can add black sesame powder to taste to make a batch of sesame-flavored mantou.
- Let dough rise until it double sizes. This takes about an hour.
- Knead the dough and gently roll it out to expel the air in the dough.
- Shape the dough into a rectangle and spread water onto its surface. At this point, if you’d like to make a mantou with a sweet flavor, you can add raisins.
- Roll the dough up into a long cylindrical snake, then cut off the head and tail of the dough snake to make the ends even. You can combine these and shape into a ball. Alternatively, if desired, the head and tail pieces can be set aside to form a decorative ball or flower shape as described (instructions below).
- Cut the remaining dough cylinder into 6 equally-sized pieces.
- Place all 7 pieces of dough onto the steamer rack of a rice cooker and let the dough rise again for 40-50 minutes.
- Steam the buns in a steamer for 12 minutes or, if you don’t have a steamer, on a raised rack in a covered pot with a small amount of water at the bottom brought to boil.
- Let the mantou rest for five minutes after the steaming process has finished.
- Enjoy your soft and fluffy mantou now!
Decorative Mantou Centerpiece Instructions
- Combine the head and tail of the dough snake and shape into another long cylindrical snake.
- Roll out the snake horizontally to flatten it out.
- Brush dough lightly with sesame oil, sprinkle ground black pepper, salt and chopped green onion down the center of the snake, then fold the snake in half.
- Use a table knife to score, or cut slits, down the body of the snake as pictured.
- Roll the snake from tail to head. This forms a decorative flower ball 花 捲