Steamed Buns – As Easy As ABC

Steamed buns

Making steamed buns is as easy as ABC. All that is needed are flour, sugar, yeast, water and lots of elbow grease if you do not have an electric mixer. Below I am sharing the recipe of the steamed buns that I just made. It is really fun and simple. All the ingredients are easily available from the bakery section of supermarkets. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Steamed Buns (Pau)

Ingredients:
500g flour
1 tsp instant yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

Mix the flour and yeast thoroughly in a mixing bowl. Dissolve sugar in water. Mix the ingredients and knead the dough with hand or with an electric mixer for 10 minutes until it becomes smooth and does not stick to the bowl. Separate the dough into 40g lumps. Roll to make them round and line the bottom of each bun with a piece of grease paper. Cover it with a piece of clean cloth and leave it to rise for 60 minutes in room temperature. Steam the buns in high heat for 15 minutes. Use a piece of rolled up wet cloth to seal the side of the steamer. Makes 24 buns.

Author: Peter Tan

Peter Gabriel Tan. Penangite residing in the Klang Valley. Blissfully married to Wuan. A LaSallian through and through. Slave to three cats. Wheelchair user since 1984. End-stage renal disease since 2017. Principal Facilitator at Peter Tan Training specialising in Disability Equality Training. Former columnist of Breaking Barriers with The Borneo Post. This blog chronicles my life, thoughts and opinions. Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.

6 thoughts on “Steamed Buns – As Easy As ABC”

  1. hi peter,

    i tried your recipe last night.. but it came out very “rubbery!”

    Any idea what went wrong?

    I halved the recipe though because there are only two of us, and I made bigger ones as well as put in kaya filling.

    Thanks for your recipe nevertheless 🙂

  2. rayhana,
    Perhaps not enough yeast and the dough did not rise enough. Make sure it is well kneaded. Keep it at room temperature. To make it rise faster, try leaving it on top of something warm, not scalding hot. One teaspoon is equivalent to 6g. I use the spoon used for measuring baking/cooking ingredients. Hope this will help.

  3. hi again peter,

    thank you for your pointers.

    umm, i had a problem of the flour not mixing with the water. i had a hard time trying to gel it together, and ended up having to add more water.

    thanks again.

  4. Hello Perter,

    Thanks for the recipe! I tried it twice already: once with whole wheat flour and once with white flour. It worked out great the first time (whole wheat) but the second time I forgot to let the dough sit _after_ rolling them into 40g balls to let them rise. Instead, I let the whole ball of dough sit.

    However, since I steamed them in two batchs, I realized my mistake after the first batch, and corrected for the second batch, which turned out great.

    I’ll be making more for sure. My wife loves them!

    Thanks,
    Fernand

  5. Peter,

    Thanks for the recipe.

    But I saw “? cup” for the water and sugar.

    How much water wohhhh?And the sugar leh?

    Hey,but I feel you should use the water lily flour-the texture is better.this was with another recipe.

    Thanks for reading.

    Paul

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