ChiFond's - Chinese Flower Roll Buns

This is one of the traditional Chinese buns I ate all the time when I was in China. I never thought of making them before because fresh ones are always available. Since I came to Canada, I couldn't find this anymore and it's ironic that we wouldn't realize how much we care about the thing until we lose it... Anyway, to ease my nostalgic feeling, I decided to make it by myself!

It was hard to make them from scratch at the beginning, the buns were like stone hard and arms got very sore after kneading the dough for half an hour... But I felt sooo happy and satisfied when I finnaly made a successful batch!

Imagine in a cold winter day, have a bite of a hot, fresh, soft bun, then drink a bit of hot Chinese green tea, hmmm...

Ingredients (make 6 buns)

200g all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon active dry yeast, 1 tablespoon sugar, a pinch of salt, 110ml warm water, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

(Please visit Glossary for explanations of ingredients and baking terms)

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆

To make the buns

1. Mix flour, sugar and salt in a medium bowl. Dissolve the dry yeast with warm water.

2. Gradually add the yeast solution to the flour, stir it at the same time until flour all clumps together. Knead the dough with hands into a ball. Slowly add in oil and keep kneading, until the surface of the dough is uniform and smooth. There should be no dough sticking on the bowl at this time.

3. Make the flower roll as following:


a) Roll the dough into a 1/4 inch thickness on a well-floured surface. Brush the dough with vegetable oil and sprinkle salt and finely chopped green onions on it. (Note: Pad dry the green onion first, otherwise the moisture would make the dough over wet).	b) Roll the dough into a roll... (I hope you understand...)

c) Cut the roll into 12 equal pieces (2 pieces to make 1 bun)	d) Take 2 pieces and put them one on the other, cut sides facing you, stretch and twist the 2 pieces together carefully until it's long enough to wrap over. Press the ends hard to make sure they stick together. Use the same method to make the other 5 buns.

It's hard to describe this method by words. The website Eupho Cafe shows pictures of every step for this method. The web is in Chinese, but you can just follow the pictures.

Now it comes the KEY part!

Normally, in order to get the yeast working and buns raised, at least an hour is required. But here is a trick that can shorten the time into 20min!.

Preheat the oven to 100C, put a glass of water in to increase the humidity, turn off the heat when temperature is reached. Leave the buns in the preheated oven for 20min.

Take the buns out and steam it over boiling water for 8min, then turn off the heat and leave the buns inside for 3 more min. Fresh buns are ready!! If you knead the dough fast enough, the whole process just takes an hour!!

From left to right, just after shaping; after 20min of fermentation; after steaming and ready to eat! See how the buns "grow"?!