Polly's BAO Making Flour Testing

I was troubleshooting the cause of yellowing of my BAO or the steam bun. 

Using Unbleached flour is one of the cause.

My mother also pointed out that maybe I put too much yeast.

To find out, I went to the Asian market and bought 4 different flours and tested them.

The results are quite interesting.

The ingredients I have been trying has been:

250 g flour

60 g sugar

7 g Baking Powder

7 g Yeast

7 g Lard

125 ml Water

The steamed bun turn out yellowish.

After reviewing some YouTube posting, I changed the formula into followings:

250 g flour

20 g sugar

2 g Baking Powder

2 g Yeast

1/4 tsp salt

1 Tbsp avocado oil

125 ml Water

Knead by hand for 10 min, cover and let rise for 20 min.

Roll out the dough, enclose with TSA XIAO meat. Rise over steamer with water at 30'F. For 1 hour.

Steam for 10 min.

Turn off the stove.  Wait 5 minutes before opening.

Viet-Namese BOT BANH flour  - I followed the package's instruction - just add the water, fill with meat and steam.  It opened up at the top just like what we see at Chinese Dim Sum restaurants.  But soon after, the Bun turned yellow as they cooled.

Flour #2 Taiwan Pastry Flour:  I added 20 g sugar, 2 g of yeast, 2 g of baking powder, etc. to the Taiwan manufactured Pastry Flour

Follow the instruction and steam.

The Bun is white and fluffy.

The Taiwan pastry flour is likely a bleached flour.

The original recipe calls for 7 g of yeast and 7 g of Baking Powder.

The top of the bun did not split open, however, even after following the chef's instruction on how to fold the top.

Flour #3 - MIKKO Cake flour - premixed for cake baking.  Added 2 g of yeast, 2 g of baking powder.

The bun is wonderfully aromatic but with great spots all over.  (Discard. Did not attempt to eat.)

Flour #4 - Korean Unbleached flour - the bun turned out nicely.  White and fluffy.

Repeat Korean Unbleached flour retest:

The bun turned out great, but the top did not split open.

Nice and soft with great bounciness.  The bun turned out white.

Out of the four flours I tried, the Korean unbleached flour turned out the best white bun.... that is if it is truly an unbleached flour.  At the store, the same brand had bleached pink bag and unbleached turquoise bag that I got.  The next test will be to see if using other unbleached flour with only 2 g of yeast and 2 g of baking powder will give the same result.