Chicken Bao

Image from Amazon.com (source)

In our recent travel to Hong Kong we had the rare opportunity to try halal Hong Kong Dim Sum in Masjid Ammar. I was smitten..... I suddenly had the urge to master all the popular Dim Sum selection I could lay my hands on, like Chicken Bun, Har Gao, Tofu sheet dim sum, glutinous rice in lotus leaves, different kinds of shiu mai.... Upon arriving back to CA, I razed our local library and found several books on dim sum, and after several tests, my favorite one is Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's. I had the mistake of doubting her bao recipe to my detriment.

My obsession with chicken bao led me to try several recipes for the bun, including one from Yin-Fei Lo's and another from Rasa Malaysia blog. I decided I prefer the Cantonese style by Yin-Fei Lo's that relies only on baking powder to rise the dough than the other style that requires some yeast. The Cantonese style resulted in very soft, cake-like bun, while the other turned more chewy. And they say one of the secret of soft bao is to use a mixture of all purpose and cake flour.

Here's my bao

Here's my bao, too

and here is my Har Gao