Steamed Marinated Chicken and Apple Bao

Preparation

Mix dough

Put your yeast in a small bowl and put about a pinch of sugar with it (this will help activate the yeast). Take your warm, room temperature water and mix it in with the yeast. Give it about five minutes until you seem some foam bubbles on the surface. Place all your dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, give it a rough mix to incorporate together. When yeast is ready, pour it into the large mixing bowl of dry ingredients. Use a silicon spatula, a little bit of elbow grease and give it a good mix until the liquid is incorporated into the flour, it'll start to look like a clumpy, tacky ball.

Knead dough

Take the dough out of the mixing bowl and start to knead it on a hard surface by continuously folding and rolling the dough onto itself, pressing with both hands to flatten. My grandma always says you have to knead at least 500 times which I've roughly calculated to about 10 minutes of straight kneading. You'll know the dough is ready when it starts to look like a smooth baby's butt and when you press into it, it should bounce back a little.

Proof dough

Completely cover your mixing bowl with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and put it in the oven with the light on or any slightly warm place for your dough baby to take a nap and proof for about 1 to 2 hours or until your dough baby doubles in size.

Make filling

In a food processor, grind chicken thighs and place into a large mixing bowl. Place the rest of the filling ingredients into the bowl and mix with your hands in a circular motion to make the filling sticky and homogenous. Cover and set aside in fridge until ready to fold.

Make wrappers

Lightly dust a work surface with flour. When your dough is ready, take out of plastic wrap and cut into half. Store one half with plastic wrap, then with the other piece, cut in half again. Roll both halves into two thin cylinders, about the size and shape of small hot dogs. Cut each cylinder into 6 equal pieces, they should look like marshmellows. Then, turn each piece cut side up and with the palm of your hand, press down onto it to flatten to make a roughly flattened circle. Dust each side with flour and then with a rolling pin, flatten to create a circular wrapper to desired thickness, about an 1/8 of an inch - not too thin but not too thick. Repeat with the rest of your marshmellow dough pieces until you have a bunch of wrappers. Make sure to flour each wrapper as you roll them out and then cover with plastic wrap so they don't dry out.

Fold and seal the buns

You can fold the baos however you'd like and have fun with it! For a classic circular fold, place a spoonful of meat in the center of your flattened dough. Then pleat around the meat with small fold, pushing the meat down as the wrapper starts to close in around it. Seal the bao and set aside.

Steam and serve

In a bamboo steamer place parchment paper underneath each bao (or get steamer liners with holes in them) and place bao on top. Place your steamer with bao on top of a shallow pot with boiling water. Steam for 15 minutes until cooked through, serve.

Storage tips

Bao stores great in the freezer! Just cook as you would nomrally and let them cool a little bit. Put them straight in the freezer in a ziploc bag. When ready, just cook them in a steamer for 5-10 minutes until cooked through, or microwave a bun wrapped in a wet paper towel for 1 minute.