Mantou or steamed rolls

I hosted bookclub at my home last night. Every time we meet we try to provide foods that were talked about in the book or are some how related to the book.

Our book club read "Safely home" which mostly takes place in China. While googling "traditional chinese foods" I came across the blog "Almost Bourdain". I immediately fell in love with the recipes chronicled there and decided to try her Mantou, or steamed buns.

While my pictures are not as beautiful, nor my result as perfect. I'm very excited about my first attempt at steamed buns (which, like Almost Bourdain, I did deep fry half my batch and served them with condensed milk)
I think one of my favorite things about this recipe, is needing to borrow my neighbors kitchen scale to measure the ingredients.
When not given to me in "cups" and "teaspoons" I do find myself very lost. However, measuring my sugar and yeast and flour, using a kitchen scale, I did feel like a culinary master and can't wait to try another recipe that requires measuring weight, apposed to volume:-)


if you try this same recipe, I recommend not trying to fit four rolls in your steamer at a time. Instead, copy "Almost Bourdain" and do just three. When they steam cook, they rise even more and mine stuck together a bit.

I wish I had take a picture of the inside for you to see. Perhaps mine were slightly over cooked, but they were still fairly fluffy on the inside. The deep fried ones were perfectly golden and crisp on the outside and the milk added just the right amount of sweetness to each bite.

It was well worth the effort and was a surprisingly simple roll to make. I will be making these again!

I also served my guests, beef and broccoli with steamed rice and Singapore noodles with beef instead of chicken. Oh and I also managed to find, pre-made chocolate covered fortune cookies with little love fortunes inside:-)