Red Bean Buns

How to make your own red bean buns, aka why I made red bean paste earlier. We followed a recipe from the internet for the buns but the paste from my recipe book. It's good that I have tons of experience making bread, because unlike what the recipe suggests, you will require a LOT more water than 1/2 cup. I always knead my dough for anything that I expect to turn out breadlike, making sure that the dough is flexible and smooth. End result? Follow the sequence of pictures. I give some extra notes that are not in the original recipe.

Before and after resting for 30 minutes. Resting is, according to most standard sources, a way to let the gluten in the dough relax, and to allow a more even mixing of water throughout the dough. When rolling dough out, if it starts shrinking back, the best bet is to let it rest! It just seems that all the tips about making better bread require you to have more patience, and to lengthen the amount of time taken to make it.

Get everything ready! Ensure your red bean paste hasn't dried out, by either covering it with glad wrap or reheating it and adding in water to make it more paste-like.

Roll out a lump of dough, making sure that the edges are more thinly rolled out than its center.


Fold the corners up, making a pleated pattern by stretching the outer region of the dough. This ensures that you don't end up with a really thick top and a thin, flat base in your bun.

Steam your buns on tiny little pieces of wax paper, so that they don't get ugly patterns from the base of the steamer.

Here you can see that we made the chunkier style of red bean paste, not the smooth silky version. I'm fine with either texture.

I was really surprised with the result, because the dough tasted perfect! Note that baking powder has an off-putting alkaline taste, which is disguised by the butter and sugar in the dough. So the recipe given has a very good balance of the ingredients, with a nice amount of fluffiness and no strong bitter aftertaste.