Flipping through Kristina Cho’s inconceivable new cookbook Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Luscious Recipes Impressed by Chinese Bakeries, it felt very now not going to procure the recipe I wanted to develop first. I immediate stumbled on my kindred treats in chapter three—“Pork Buns and Beyond”—which is stuffed with each iconic and new-college delicious snacks devour char siu bao stuffed with crimson barbecued pork, a jaw-shedding deep-dish pepperoni bread, and beautiful hot dog flower buns which can per chance per chance maybe be as miraculous to gaze upon as they are to drag aside, one “petal” at a time . Luscious buns are my favourite Chinese bakery delicacy, so I was as soon as ecstatic to procure a full chapter featuring twists on nostalgic favorites.
But it with out a doubt was as soon as the Pork Floss and Seaweed Pull-Apart Rolls that I and all people I baked them for could per chance maybe now not pause raving about. We had seconds and thirds, fought over the squidgiest (and arguably finest) bun within the heart of the pan, and ate your entire leftover pork floss straight from the container.
The bun itself is manufactured from Cho’s master milk bread recipe, which she contains into all forms of recipes all through the book. It’s bouncy and light-weight and employs tangzhong, a immediate roux of milk and flour that will get mixed into the yeasted dough, which keeps the resulting bread astronomical moist. As soon as you roll out the dough correct into a rectangle, you unfold on a layer of candy Kewpie mayonnaise, top with a generous sprinkling of seaweed-delicious furikake, and attain all of it off with a thick layer of pork floss earlier than the dough will get rolled up and sliced into buns (mediate delicious cinnamon rolls). As soon as baked, these mighty and fluffy buns have a contact of sweetness from the mayo, savoriness from the furikake, and a punch of salty richness from the pork floss in every bite.
Pork floss shall be a smartly-identified gaze to any individual who’s poured over the level to cases at any Chinese bakery, where you’re at risk of procure it as a coating on mighty, bouncy sponge cakes, in Swiss-roll-trend cakes, or tucked into buns. (It’s also a in point of fact smartly-liked topping for jook or congee.) Also acknowledged as pork sung or rou tune, among diverse names, pork floss is perfectly named: It’s finely shredded pork seasoned with candy and salty elements equivalent to sugar and soy sauce. The pork is then dehydrated till wispy and cotton candy-devour. These candy-salty morsels of dried pork are fully irresistible, melting on the tongue and leaving you wishing you had a fat spun cone of the stuff whereas strolling around a county magnificent.
Pork floss is most readily on hand at Chinese and Asian markets, however if you haven’t shopped for it earlier than, let Cho stroll you down the aisles of the Asian grocery retailer—the book dedicates several pages to breaking down your entire wonders you’ll procure within the aisles, from myriad sauces to dried mushrooms and beans to the gargantuan world of cured, salted, and dried meats. And if you’re lucky ample to stumble upon pork floss, don’t mediate twice—procure the supreme container you would possibly per chance procure, and develop these delicious buns earlier than you eat all of it straight from the jar.
Secure the Recipe:
Pork Floss and Seaweed Pull-Apart Rolls
These pillowy milk bread buns are stuffed with an irresistible combo of candy-and-salty pork floss, mayonnaise, and delicious furikake.
