Notes from various recipes
These came out great! Letting it rise for long enough made the texture really fluffy.
If I could do it again I might add a touch more cinnamon or maybe try a less strong cream cheese than Philadelphia so that the cheese flavor doesn’t overpower the cinnamon flavor. I might also try more flavoring like nutmeg or ginger.
Sheng Jian Bao (ChatGPT-generated)
Ingredients
- 200g flour (1 2/3 cups)
- 10g sugar (2 tsp)
- 3g yeast (1 tsp)
- 2g salt (1/2 tsp)
- 5g vegetable oil (1 tsp)
- 110g water or milk (1/c cup)
Fillings tried
- Cranberry sauce and sweet potato filling (TODO: copy from ChatGPT). This turned out well
- Mushroom and onion. This didn’t turn out well
- Leftover green bean casserole. This turned out great! But I didn’t have the time to freeze it so shaping was difficult
- Leftover turkey, gravy, and mashed potato. This turned out ok but the flavors weren’t very strong
It’s best if you freeze or harden the filling somehow, and the filling should be something with a strong flavor.
Steps
- Bloom, mix, knead, rise until doubled.
- Separate into about 8 equal pieces, then pre-shape into balls
- Shape with a rolling pin into circles. If possible, you want a slight convex/lens shape with thinner edges
- Fold the dumpling wrappers around the filling, let rest a bit (can find videos on Youtube for shaping)
- Heat a little oil in a pan on medium or medium-high. Cook the bottoms for 1-2 min, then add 1/4 cup of water and put a lid on to steam them for 4-5 minutes, then cook without the lid for about a minute to re-crisp the bottoms
- Cool on a cooling rack so that the bottoms don’t lose the crisp
These turned out great, though I made some adjustments:
- Didn’t use eggs in the dough or the wash
- Used milk wash
- On the best one, I used a little starter too and had the first rise going overnight to develop flavor and save time
The tangzhong method is okay. One nice thing is that I can use it to melt or soften the butter, which also brings down the paste temperature. But the pot was always a bit annoying to clean because it doesn’t break down in water easily. I think it made the dough a little easier to handle than I’d normally expect though.
Starter experiment
For one week
Option A: Fed 10g white flour, 10g water every day. Left at room temp
Option B: Fed 10g wheat flour, 6-7g water every day. Left in the fridge
After one week, I baked a small loaf with somf of each
White: 60g starter, 170g flour, 110g water, 5g salt
Wheat: 60g starter, 170g flour, 121g water, 5g salt
I let them rise for about 7 hours, then gently shaped them and let them proof for about 40 min.
Then I baked the white one at 400 with convection on the bread stone for about 27 min. Then I baked the wheat one the same way.
Notes:
- I couldn’t tell if one tasted more sour than the other.
- The white one rose much more.
- Even though it’s only a small amount of starter I could taste the wheat flour from the wheat starter and that added a lot of flavor.
- Conclusion: The white one was much more active by the time I used it. Both were tasty but in different ways.
Retro:
- I think 60% hydration with wheat flour is a bad combination because wheat soaks more. Something like 80% might be better