White fluffy baos......(steamed chinese buns)

I miss being able to walk to the nearby kopitiam to buy hot steaming baos anytime of the day.....sometimes 24/7 at those 24hr shops.

While baos aren't uncommon in the chinatowns of bigger US cities......they are definitely as rare as the blue unicorn over here in my little town.

Unfortunately, my recent bao craving was too hard to ignore.....so I got my hands (& kitchen) dirty in making those little white fluffy balls.

I bought the bao flour online from Asiansupermarket365 and it yielded A LOT.......too much actually. I should've made just half of it but I didn't realise that until it was too late. Anyway, I had wrapped the leftover dough in shrink wrap and kept it in the fridge for later. I hope it'll keep well *cross fingers*

As it was my first time making the baos, I did have some difficulties making the dough by hand (arms were aching after that!). I also was not able to wrap the fillings nicely in the dough (maybe I was too greedy with the large amounts of fillings...hee hee). The dough was thicker at the part where I pinched the dough together to enclose the filling :P

Anyway, below are the steamed baos....notice how the bao skin ain't very smooth but looks like got "cellulite"....haha.

I put 2 types of filling in the baos.....one of them my favorite red bean paste which I had made from the azuki beans last week and left to chill in the refrigerator....

......see what I meant by me being too greedy with the filling :D

Ideally, I'd love some char siew filling baos....but since I didn't have char siew, I used some of my pulled pork to make "southern baos" (pulled pork being a traditional southern dish)!!

It actually turned out pretty well and I really like the taste of it......it tastes almost like kong bak bao which is my other favorite!!

I only used like half of the dough.....and I made almost 40 small baos!! I kept half of the baos in freezer bags and placed them in the freezer. The other half will go towards stuffing our faces over the next couple of days :O

While the baos didn't turn out very pretty with all the bumpy skins.....they do taste yummy and pretty close to what we can get in SG. So I'm happy and my tummy very satisfied.