What your life needs right now: Taiwanese scallion buns

I have always loved Taiwanese bakeries. Even back at the beginning of my life in Taipei, I often indulged my passion for cakes and pastries by making the rounds of my favorite baked goods shops. These buns were one of my most memorable crushes. And now you get to taste why.

If you like things like scallion pancakes (cōngyóubĭng 蔥油餅), where the fragrant green confetti of chopped green onions collides against a dab of oil, a sprinkle of salt, and enough starchy goodness to spread out the flavors in a perfect pattern, then you are going to adore these little breads.

And the thing is, these are super, super easy to pull together. The fact that they are drop-dead gorgeous just makes them irresistible.

Even if this is your first attempt at making raised bread, you will be successful. The actual hands-on time is minimal, as for the lion’s share of the prep you’ll simply be waiting around for the yeast to wake up, the dough to rise, and the buns to bake.

Really foamy yeast is important

If you want, you can make these in a stand mixer with a dough hook or a food processor. It doesn’t really matter. But I like to just whip these up in a bowl and then quickly knead everything on a counter, since I find it’s even faster and simpler that way.

I’m not sure of their history, but I’m guessing that these started out as one of Hong Kong’s many variations on the Parker House roll theme that has worked its way into so many Chinatown bakeries and dim sum teahouses. Perhaps Japan had a hand in this somewhere along the way, as its influence on Taiwan’s Western-style baked goods has always been pretty strong and, admittedly, delicious.

But no matter what their provenance, these buns really took off as culinary stars once they took root in Taiwan. Fortunes have been made with bakeries specializing in these soft breads—both savory and sweet—and many a Chinese market on this side of the Pacific will have a beloved satellite bakery attached to it, or at least very close by.

Fully risen dough

Taiwanese baked breads tend to be much softer and lighter than what we make in the West. There are eggs and shortening in the dough to make the bread even fluffier, but the key to the perfect texture is (as with all Chinese pastas and breads) the flour. Try to find good Korean wheat flour, since it has the right amount of gluten and tends to be of excellent quality. The ones with the polar bear somewhere on the bag are my favorite brand. If that’s not an option, just use my go-to recipe for Chinese flour: 2 parts all-purpose plus 1 part pastry flour.

Although the dough recipe is my own, the source for the shaping of these buns is an excellent blog called The Woks of Life. The ones they showed there were so beautiful that they really caught my eye. This blog deserves a lot of credit and is worth bookmarking, so here’s a shout out and a whole lot of thanks to this adorable family of food writers and bloggers!

These freeze and reheat incredibly well, so make a big batch and stash them away for breakfasts and snacks. If you’re a vegetarian, leave out the pork fluff and you’ll still have amazing buns on your hands.

Mayo as glue = yum

Green onion and pork fluff buns

Xiāngcōng ròusōng miànbāo 香蔥肉鬆麵包

Taiwan

Makes 16 (6-inch | 15 cm) batons

Dough:

1½ cups | 300 ml warm water

½ cup | 50 g powdered milk (nonfat or regular)

1 tablespoon bread yeast

¼ cup | 60 g sugar

1 large egg, lightly beaten

4 cups | 600 g Chinese flour, plus about 1 cup | 150 g more for kneading and shaping 

1½ teaspoons sea salt

¼ cup fresh peanut or vegetable oil

Filling:

2 cups lightly packed | 150 g finely chopped green onions

About 1¼ cups | 100 g homemade pork fluff (see Tips), optional

1 cup | 240 ml mayonnaise

Toppings:

Slit the cigar down the middle

1 large egg, lightly beaten, mixed with 1 teaspoon water

2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

1 tablespoon sugar dissolved in 1 tablespoon boiling water

1. Mix the warm water, powdered milk, yeast, and sugar together in a large work bowl. Give the yeast time to wake up and become very foamy, which should take around 20 to 30 minutes. If you don’t get a good head of foam, buy fresh yeast and start over.

2. Stir the egg, flour, salt, and oil into the yeast mixture to form a soft dough. Flour a smooth work surface and dump the dough out on top. Quickly knead the dough, adding more flour as necessary to keep it from sticking, until it is smooth and bouncy. Roll the dough into a ball lightly flour it. Cover the dough with a clean tea towel, invert the bowl over the top to help keep the dough moist, and wait until the dough has risen to at least twice its original size, which will take about an hour.

Ready for the oven

3. Cut the dough into 16 even pieces. Toss them with flour and cover with a dry tea towel to keep them from drying out. Cover 2 baking sheets with either Silpat or parchment paper. Heat a convection oven to 350°F | 175°C (regular oven 375°F | 190°C) and set 1 rack near the center. Working on one piece at a time, roll a piece into a rectangle about 2 x 4 inches | 10 x 5 cm in size. Spread 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise over the dough and sprinkle it with about 2 tablespoons green onion and an optional 1 tablespoon of pork fluff. 

4. Roll the rectangle up from a long side into a cigar, gently flatten it, and then cut it down the middle, leaving one end uncut. Lightly twist these two pieces together with the cut sides out so that they look pretty. Pinch the cut end closed. Place the bun on a prepared baking sheet. You should be able to fit 8 of these buns on each sheet, but be sure to leave around 1 inch | 2 cm between them on all sides, as they will rise. Repeat this step with 7 more balls of dough in order to fill up the sheet.

5. Brush the egg wash all over each of the twists, and then sprinkle them generously with the sesame seeds. Set the pan in the center of the oven and bake for about 13 minutes, or until the buns are a lovely golden brown. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 for the remaining 8 pieces of dough while the first batch is cooking.

6. Once the buns have baked, brush them with the sugar-water glaze, which will not only add an edge of sweetness, but also make them beautifully shiny. Refrigerate or freeze in resealable bags. To reheat, set them in a 250°F |120°C oven for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Tips

Yes, please

You can of course use store-bought pork fluff. It is much lighter and flossier than the homemade stuff, and also has less flavor but a more delicate crunch, so feel free to use more. If you don’t eat pork, be on the lookout for chicken (jīsõng 雞鬆) or fish (yúsōng 魚鬆) or even vegetarian fluff (sùròusōng 素肉鬆).

Nowadays you can find all sorts of pork fluff on the market. One is called ròusū 肉酥 and seems to be more or less the same thing as pork fluff, or ròusōng 肉鬆. Often stacked nearby will be containers of ròupú 肉脯, and from what I can figure out, these are more or less the same thing, just longer and consisting of slightly coarser threads than rousong.

Again, you can use fluff of some sort here or leave it out. These buns will be fantastic any way you do them.

A chewy take on a Taiwanese classic bread

Anyone who has ever had the good fortune to live in Taiwan for any length of time has probably been seduced by the bakeries there, and I proudly count myself among the many who can never say no to a fresh hot bun. 

These bakeries tend to offer Chinese takes on Western breads, pastries, and cakes, which can be odd and confusing at first. I remember biting into my first pork fluff bun and wondering what was going on in my mouth. (And if you’ve never tried pork fluff, or ròusōng 肉鬆, it’s a light and flossy creation that takes braised boneless pork and then tosses it with oil in a wok over heat until it falls apart into feathery bits. It’s totally strange and totally delicious.)

Anyway, back to that bun: the bread was on the sweet side, like a Parker House roll with a bit more sugar added, and mayonnaise had been used to glue the pork fluff onto the top of the bun. But after a few cautious nibbles, I realized what a great thing I had in my hand, and it disappeared in a flash.

Get lively, super fresh onions

Other local bakery delights – and many of these you can find in a Chinese bakery if you happen to live near a place with lots of Chinese folks – include pineapple buns (which don’t have any pineapple in them, as they are actually more like Mexican conchas and are topped with a crumbly layer that’s shaped like a pineapple skin), taro buns with the mashed purple paste inside, the usual suspects like red beans and custard, buttery fillings studded with raisins, and a million other concoctions.

One of my all-time favorites, though, are these Green Onion Baked Buns. They smell absolutely heavenly, and I adore the salty, oniony layer that cuts into the gentle sweetness of the bread, giving this particular pastry a lot of personality. The fact that it’s more savory than sweet also makes it especially attractive to me, since that means I can wolf down quite a few without feeling too ill.

This dough's ready to go

I’ve messed around with this classic, though, since I am of the opinion that bread should have more texture. (If you’re a purist, just pull out your favorite recipe for Parker House rolls like this one and use it instead of my bread recipe.) Whatever you do, don’t skimp on the green onions. You really want to pile them on, for the bread will rise in the oven and give those onions plenty of surface to grab on to.

In order to give the onions as skid-free a surface as possible, I’ve learned to cut a deep cross into the top of the buns after they’ve been shaped, since this opens up air holes that are rough enough to give the onions something to cling to and nestled down into as the breads bake away. And because they are cut this way, the circles turn into squares, like magic. 

Traditionally the bakeries brush these with a light sugar syrup to make them glossy and add another layer of sweetness. Again, I don’t do that since I just find it messy and I’m aiming to veer away from too much sweetness here, but if you prefer, you can boil up a light sugar syrup (1 part sugar boiled with 3 parts water until the sugar completely dissolves) and dab it on at the end.

Mound on the onions

I’d store any leftover buns in the fridge for a day or two. But I’m just guessing here. We plow through these the same day they’re made. These are great for rainy days when you want to stay at home, steam up the windows, and then revel in some good food while the storm rages outside.

Green onion baked buns

Táishì cōnghuā miànbāo  台式蔥花麵包

Taiwan

Makes 16

Yeast:

2 teaspoons active yeast

¾ cup | 175 ml warm water

6 tablespoons | 85 g sugar

Dough:

1 cup | 140 g Chinese flour, or ⅔ cup all-purpose and ⅓ cup pastry flour, plus extra as needed

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3½ tablespoons | 50 ml water

¼ cup | 55 g salted butter, softened

1 teaspoon peanut or vegetable oil

Topping:

8 green onions, trimmed and finely chopped
1 to 2 teaspoons sea salt
Spray oil

1. Mix the yeast with the warm water and sugar, and let it proof for 20 to 30 minutes. You should have a nice froth going on in there, and if you don’t, toss it out and buy new yeast.

2. Mix the flour and salt together in a medium work bowl. Whisk the egg and water together, reserve 1 tablespoon for the topping, and add the rest of the egg mixture to the flour, along with the yeast mixture and butter. Combine to form a soft dough, and then knead it on a lightly floured board until the dough no longer is sticky, but rather is as supple and smooth as an earlobe. Rinse out the bowl, oil it lightly, return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise until double. Turn the dough over on itself (fold the edges into the center all the way around), flip the dough over, cover, and let it again rise until double. It is ready when you poke two fingers into the dough and the holes don’t collapse on themselves.

"Tiger's mouth"

3. While the dough is rising, prepare the topping by tossing the green onions with 1 tablespoon salt. Scrunch the onions and salt together and then take a taste – if you prefer a slightly saltier taste, add more salt. (I do.) Prepare 2 baking sheets by spraying them with oil. Heat the oven to 350°F | 175°C and arrange the racks near the center of the oven.

4. To form the buns, cut the dough into 16 even pieces. (The easiest way to do this is to roll the dough out into an even rope 16 inches long, and then cutting it into 1-inch pieces – or you can figure out something equally easy using the metric system.) Toss the bits of dough lightly with some flour. Turn these knobs into evenly shaped balls using the “tiger’s mouth” technique: pop them through your fist as shown to the upper right.

Cut open each ball of dough

5. Use a sharp knife to cut a cross halfway through each ball (see photo to the lower right), and then set 8 balls on each baking sheet. Dab the insides of each cross with the leftover egg mixture and divide the green onions among the buns.

6. Let the dough rise another 20 minutes or so, and then bake until golden brown, or about 30 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and back to front so that they all cook evenly. Remove the buns from the oven, cool them on a cake rack, and enjoy them as soon as you can without burning your mouth.

Pork fluff is so amazing... and so easy

This way to prepare meat is beloved by just about every ethnic Chinese person out there. And for good reason. But strange as it may be, pork fluff has pretty much remained a mysterious secret to everyone else.

Yes, you can buy it in most Chinese grocery stores. And it’s often rather tasty. My personal favorite brand is from Taiwan: Hsin Tung Yang. This commercial variety has a really flossy texture that reminds me of cotton candy—and is probably why some people prefer to call this “pork floss”—and the quality is high enough to pass muster if homemade is not available.

How do you use it? Well, it is the ideal accompaniment to a bowl of plain rice or a friendly breakfast array of congee dishes. This is so delicious that it needs little more than a simple starch to back it up with not too many frills or bells. You really need the gentle sweetness of rice or wheat to complement all the glorious textures and flavors of the pork, and so the other standard ways to enjoy pork fluff are to either sandwich it between two slices of white bread or (my husband’s favorite) fill a fresh, hot steamed bun, or mantou, with as much as he can get away with.

Cube the pork

He remembers being conscripted for pork fluff duty at an early age. This was one of his mom’s recipes, and the most boring part—stir-frying and smacking at the meat in a hot wok—was generally relegated to her eldest and more hyperactive son. Since he has always been a picky eater with an enormous appetite, he would gladly seize this opportunity to climb up on a stool in front of the coal stove and get to work, mainly because this meant he got to sneak in more oil than his mom specified in order to get a really crispy edge to the meat and to heighten the flavors with a lot more seasonings. Now you can see where my very own culinary Mr. Blackwell got his start.

The recipe here meets his exacting standards, I’m happy to say. As with so many things, please view this as a template. You can use chicken or fish here instead of pork, or other meats like beef and goat. All of these are traditional in different parts of China.

Break up the cubes

The seasonings are also nothing more than a suggestion. Finely shredded ginger, for example, could be added to the wok when you start frying the pork, or you could use oyster sauce instead of soy sauce, or you could toss in finely shredded laver seaweed (aka zicai or nori) at the very end.

The only things you really need to do is 
a) make sure the meat is braised until it is super tender, as this encourages it to fall apart in the wok, 
b) use the right amount of oil, since you don’t want this either dry or soggy, 
c) keep stirring and whacking for 30 minutes, which can be viewed as a great aerobic exercise that builds up a Popeye-like forearm, and 
d) make sure that all of the liquids are fully boiled off before you remove the wok from the heat, as you want the meat to be crispy.

Hand-shredded & ready to fry

Pork fluff

Ròusōng 肉鬆

Jiangsu and all over China

Makes about 4 cups ( )

Pork and braise:

1 pork loin (around 1 to 1½ pounds | 450 – 600 grams)

¼ cup | 60 ml Chinese cooking rice wine or Taiwanese Mijiu

2 tablespoons light soy sauce

Water to cover

Wok seasonings:

¼ cup | 60 ml peanut or vegetable oil, used ok

2 tablespoons light soy sauce

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon (or more) toasted sesame seeds

1. Cut the pork into 1 inch | 2 cm squares. Place the pork in the bottom of a pressure cooker, cover with water, and simmer for around 10 minutes. Dump out the water and rinse off any scum from the meat and the pan.

After 15 minutes or so

2. Return the meat to the pan and add the rice wine, soy sauce, and water to cover. Cover the pressure cooker and set it over high heat. Reduce the heat as necessary to maintain second-ring pressure, and cook it for 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and release the pressure before opening the lid. The meat should be tender enough at this point to crumble at the least pressure. Use a slotted spoon to remove it to a wok and reserve the cooking liquid for something else. Line a large platter with crumpled parchment paper or a paper towel.

3. Lightly whack away at the pork to reduce it to shards, and then crumble it into fine threads with your fingers. Toss the pork with the oil and set the wok over medium heat. Use a wok spatula to toss and break up the pork, adjusting the heat as necessary. Add more oil if the pork begins to stick, but be careful not to make the meat soggy. After about 20 minutes, the pork will be light gold and the edges of the shards will sprout fine filaments that will crisp up as you continue to fry them. Add the soy sauce, sugar, and sesame seeds at this point and continue to toss and break up the meat into finer and finer threads. After 30 minutes total frying time, taste and adjust the seasoning. The pork should be fine and crumbly at this point, and it will become even more divine as it cools. Scrape the pork fluff out onto the platter and let it cool completely. Refrigerate it in a closed container. It will stay perfect for weeks, if for some strange reason it happens to last more than a day.

A video of the tossing and whacking in action

Crunchy breakfast rice rolls -- a Taipei memory

The sweet version of these rice rolls was without a doubt the first thing I ever bought to eat in Taipei, and the reason for this was that a nice middle-aged Taiwanese lady would plant herself in front of my language school every single weekday morning and sell them from her simple cart.

She was that lovely sort of woman who seemed to run Taipei’s underground economy: short, strong, with a smiling and ruddy face, her arms and neck were covered with gaily printed cotton to protect her from the sun, and she wore a wide conical hat made out of bamboo sheaths. Industrious and incredibly dependable, she’d make her usual rounds as she pushed her iron and wood cart through our neighborhood, calling out “Fantuan!” (rice rolls) as she walked, and providing a delicious hot breakfast for what must have been about a quarter.

Like Laura Palmer: wrapped in plastic

One thing that has struck me as strange, now that I think of it: although this is a morning staple that most likely originated in Nanjing (Zhejiang province), I never saw anyone but Taiwanese ladies selling them. And this is really unusual, because it was usually expats from the Mainland who sold their hometown specialties.

Anyway, that nice lady would ask me whether I wanted sweet or savory that day and then spread the rice out on a wrung-out towel, as the moisture would keep the rice from sticking to the cloth. The finished roll would be wrapped up in a piece of paper and tossed into a plastic bag so that I could slowly savor it between classes.

Today, street hawkers are a rare sight in Taipei; things like these rice rolls are found almost exclusively now in the breakfast shops that specialize in hot soybean milk and the fried crullers known as youtiao. Sometimes called “fried devils” in both English and Chinese (youzha gui 油炸鬼), this name most likely originated in Hong Kong and was a misinterpretation of yet another one of their names, “fried crullers” (youzha guozi 油炸果子).

Chinese crullers

Both the sweet and savory versions are delicious and unusual and highly addictive. They are perfect with a bowl of hot soybean milk, a combination that brings back immediate memories of my first hot, humid, wonderful mornings in Taipei.

Crunchy breakfast rice rolls 
Zīfàntuán 栥飯團 
Zhejiang

1 rice roll (can be multiplied infinitely)

Sweet:

½ fried Chinese cruller (youtiao), see Tips

1 cup hot, cooked sweet rice (aka glutinous rice)

2 tablespoons chopped Toasted Peanuts

2 tablespoons Toasted Sesame Seeds

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste

Pickled greens & radish

Savory:

½ fried Chinese cruller (youtiao), see Tips

A drizzle of peanut or vegetable oil

1 to 2 tablespoons salted dried radish (caipu)

1 to 2 tablespoons sour pickled mustard greens (suancai)

1 cup hot, cooked sweet rice

¼ cup (or more) fried pork fluff (rousong), see Tips

¼ of a finely chopped Pickled Red Chili, optional

1. Split the cruller down the middle into two long strips, cut each strip into 2 equal pieces (giving you 4 pieces per cruller), and then heat as many of them as you want them in a 300°F oven until very crispy. (You can bake them until they are very hard, if you prefer, at 275°F for a longer time.) If you are making the savory rice rolls, heat half of the oil in a wok over medium-high until it smokes and fry the radish for a few seconds to even out the flavors; scrape this out onto a small plate. Repeat this step with the other half of the oil and fry the pickled mustard greens. 

Pork fluff

2. If the rice is super-hot, lay a clean washcloth on your counter, cover it with a large, clean resealable plastic bag, and then top this with a foot-wide piece of cling wrap. (The washcloth will protect your hands, the plastic bag will give you a nice slippery surface, and the cling wrap will keep the sticky rice manageable.) If the rice is cool enough to handle, you can omit the washcloth.

3. Scoop a cup of the hot rice onto the middle of the cling wrap and use a rubber spatula to spread it out into a more or less 8-inch square. Sprinkle either the sweet or the savory condiments along the middle section and lay a piece of the toasted cruller on top. Use all three layers of the wrapping to roll up the rice and condiments around the cruller, patting the ends in to seal in everything. Lightly squeeze the rice roll in your hands to compact everything around the cruller and keep it from falling apart. Rearrange the cling wrap, if necessary, around the rice roll and serve it wrapped up. The diner then peels back the cling wrap as bites are taken.

Layer on the fillings

Tips

Use fresh, hot rice for this; reheated rice doesn’t have the same amount of stickiness or flavor. 

Be sure and used sweet (glutinous) rice, as other varieties won’t be able to hold the grains together in a nice layer unless you mash them into a pulp.

Fried crullers are now a common item in the freezer section of Chinese grocers; these packages usually contain 3 or 4, so just remove as many as you’d like and reclose the package in a freezer bag. If left in the fridge, the crullers will mold within a week, so freeze them for longer storage.

A toaster oven is perfect for heating up the crullers.

Nuts & sugar

Fry the salted radish and pickled mustard greens before you use them, as they otherwise will have an unpleasant packaged flavor. 

If you don’t care for salty things, they can be rinsed in a sieve and patted dry before being fried.

Pork fluff is meat that has been shredded, deep-fried, and then cooked with seasonings like soy sauce and sugar until it is fine and, well, fluffy. Taiwan has some good brands, with the best being (IMHO)  Hsin Tung Yang. Keep the pork fluff in a tightly closed jar, use it up within a month or so, and dry it out in the oven on low if it looses its oomph.