Mouthwatering, juicy Chinese BBQ pork in a rich gravy sauce wrapped in a soft and fluffy milk bread bun. These classic baked Chinese BBQ pork buns (Char Siu Bao) will have you coming back for seconds!

What is Char Siu Bao

Char siu bao, also known as 叉燒包 in Cantonese, is a popular Chinese bun that you’ll find at nearly every single dim sum restaurant during tea time (dim sum) and at Chinese bakeries all around the world.

There are two versions of these buns: The more traditional steamed version and a baked version.

The appearance of the steamed char siu bao version is milky white with a beautiful blossoming flower shape, and housed inside the bun is a delicious, sweet, and savory red char siu filling.

These buns are known for being soft and fluffy, sweet and savory, and a hallmark of Cantonese cuisine.

Baked char siu bao (叉燒餐包), on the other hand, has a round ball-like appearance, golden brown in color, and looks like your typical baked bun. The filling is the same, though, a delicious, sweet, and savory BBQ pork filling.

Where to Buy Char Siu (Chinese BBQ Pork)

Chinese BBQ pork is readily available at all Chinese BBQ restaurants. You’ll usually see an assortment of Barbequed meats on display in the glass windows.

Also, most large Chinese supermarkets sell char siu as well.

Now, in the unfortunate event that you live on the outskirts in a remote region without access to any Chinese restaurants or supermarkets, you can always make your own char siu using my homemade char siu recipe.

Baked vs Steamed Char Siu Bao

Both steamed and baked char siu bao are filled with the same delicious char siu filling that you’ve come to love, however, the method of making the buns as well as the ingredients used in the dough are a little different.

With Chinese baked BBQ pork buns, you’ll usually find the buns use your typical milk bread ingredients such as a tangzhong (water roux), milk, butter, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, etc, that are used in other Chinese baked buns such as Chinese tuna buns. The buns are usually shaped into a round ball and don’t require any special folding methods.

An egg wash is applied to the baked Chinese pork buns before they are baked until golden brown.

Chinese steamed BBQ pork buns, on the other hand, at least in dim sum restaurants, typically use a sourdough starter, alkaline water, baking powder, baking soda, flour, and a lot of sugar, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot!!!

The buns are usually wrapped in a pleated pattern, which, when steamed, produces the beautiful blossoming flower look.

When wrapping the buns, it can be quite difficult and complicated for a beginner if they wish to achieve the flower blossoming look of a typical steamed char siu bun that uses the pleat folding method.

And then there is, of course, the method of steaming. Typically, the buns are steamed at a very high temperature that results in a fluffy, sweet texture that just melts in your mouth.

For beginners, baked char siu bao buns are a lot easier to make, and therefore, I recommend that beginners look for an easy baked char siu bao recipe to start off.

Char Siu Bao Ingredient Notes

Here’s what you’ll need for this baked char siu bao recipe:

Milk Buns

Tangzhong: Makes our bread extra soft and fluffy. It also prevents our bread from turning stale and dry the very next day! Don’t skip this.

Bread flour: Adds a nice chewy bread texture to our buns compared to using regular all-purpose flour due to the higher protein content.

Unsalted butter: Make sure the butter is unsalted and is at room temperature to make it easier to mix into the dough.

Milk: Adds flavor, makes our bread softer by enhancing our bread’s hydration levels.

Sugar: Adds a bit of sweetness to the milk bread, which is a hallmark of Chinese buns.

Table salt: to balance out the sweetness a little bit.

Instant yeast: Helps our dough rise and adds some flavor to it.

Egg: Adds extra flavor to our bread, binds all of the ingredients together, and makes our dough softer.

Milk powder: For the milk powder, you can use either whole milk, 2%, or 1%. The higher the fat content, the richer it will taste. I don’t recommend using skim milk powder, as most of the flavor is gone.

Filling

Char siu: You can use either store-bought char siu or make your own using my char siu recipe, of course 😉

Green onions and garlic: These two ingredients add fragrant aromatics to our filling, making it more delicious.

Cooking oil: Used for stir-frying our aromatics and adding a nice shine to our filling.

Oyster sauce + light soy sauce: Used as our main seasoning ingredients, adding a ton of umami flavor to our filling and typically used in traditional Chinese recipes.

Dark soy sauce: used for coloring our filling and giving it a beautiful dark color. It also adds additional flavoring to our filling.

Chicken powder: It adds additional seasoning and flavor to our filling.

White sugar: Sweetens our char siu filling. Traditionally, char siu filling in buns tends to be on the sweeter side. I’ve reduced the sugar a bit to balance it out with the saltiness of the other ingredients.

Water: To thin out our char siu sauce and make it a little more runny.

Starch slurry (cornstarch, potato starch, water): Used to thicken up our char siu filling sauce and make it easier to wrap in our buns.

Egg wash: adds a nice golden brown color to our buns.

Sugar glaze: Adds a touch of sweetness to the top of our buns, just like how the bakeries do it!

Substitutions

Milk powder: You can use Coffee Mate as a substitute for the milk powder.
Instant yeast: You can substitute it with dry active yeast. Just make sure that you activate the yeast with warm water + a little sugar prior to adding it into the dough.
Bread flour: Use all-purpose if you really can’t find bread flour, but Costco sells a 10kg bag of bread flour for cheap!
Char siu: Just use char siu and stop trying to substitute everything in the recipe! Just kidding. Chicken works.
Cornstarch and potato starch: You can substitute them with tapioca starch.
White granulated sugar: You can substitute it with brown sugar.

How to Make Baked Char Siu Bao

Making baked char siu buns will consist of 4 stages:

Making the tangzhong
Making the char siu filling
Making the dough
Combining everything

This recipe for baked char siu bao doesn’t need to be done all in one day. You can make the tangzhong and filling the night before and then use it the next day when you’re ready to make the dough, if you’d like.

Making the Tangzhong

We’re going to start off by making our Tangzhong, a water roux. This will make our bread nice and airy when baking and keep it soft longer.
In a small saucepan, add your bread flour and water. Heat the pan on low heat while constantly stirring it until the mixture turns into a thick gelatinous paste.

Then remove the pan from the stove and transfer it to a small bowl or dish. Cover it with plastic wrap and then store it in the fridge and let it cool down for at least 30 minutes before using. You can also make your Tangzhong the night before as well.

While our tangzhong is cooling down in the fridge, we’re going to make our char siu filling next.

Making the Char Siu Filling

To start, make the starch slurry by combining potato starch and corn starch with water. Mix everything well together and set aside.

In a cup or bowl, add in your oyster sauce, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, chicken powder, sugar, and water. Mix everything well together and then set it aside.

Now heat up a wok on medium heat.
Once the wok is hot, add 1 Tbsp of cooking oil into the wok and swirl it around the wok. Next, crush your garlic and cut your green onions into 3-inch-long pieces and add them to the wok.

Adding in green onions and crushed garlic to wok

Stir-fry everything until aromatic (about 30 seconds).
Now, give your sauce a quick stir and then pour it into the wok as well. Mix everything well together and let it cook for about 2-3 minutes over medium heat.

Next, remove the green onions and crushed garlic from your wok and turn your stove down to medium-low heat.

Give your starch slurry a quick mix to avoid letting the starch pool at the bottom.
Now, while stirring the sauce in the wok, slowly pour in the starch slurry into the wok.

Mix everything well together, and then turn the heat back to medium-high heat while constantly stirring the sauce.
Allow the sauce to cook until it becomes very thick and bubbly, and then remove the sauce from the wok. Pour it into a bowl and allow it to cool down.

Once it has cooled down, cover it with some plastic wrap and then place it in the fridge to allow it to thicken up even more.
Once the sauce has thickened up and cooled down in the fridge, take your char siu and cut it into bite-sized pieces about the size of your fingernails.

Combine the char siu with your sauce and mix everything well together, and then cover it again and place it back in the fridge for later use.

Making the Dough

In a large mixing bowl, add in your bread flour, white granulated sugar, table salt, instant yeast, milk powder, 1 egg, and the Tangzhong from earlier.

Pop the mixing bowl into a stand mixer and give it a quick few whisks.
Then add in your room temperature milk and mix everything together for 3-4 minutes.

Then add in your room temperature butter and continue kneading the dough for an additional 11-12 minutes until the dough is very smooth.

Next, transfer the dough to a greased large bowl.
Then shape the dough into a round ball. If you find the dough difficult to handle, then you can apply either some oil or water to your hands.
Once done shaping the dough, place it back into the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap or a towel, and let it proof in a warm place until doubled in size, approximately 1 hour.

Once our dough has finished proofing, de-gase the dough and transfer it to your countertop.
Shape it into a ball and weigh out the dough.

Next, divide the dough into 8 pieces and weigh out each piece.

Then shape each piece into a round ball and then cover it, and let it rest for about 20 minutes to relax the dough.

Once 20 minutes have passed, sprinkle a little bit of flour onto your countertop and grab one piece of the dough and flatten it out. Now roll the dough out into a circular shape, making sure that the middle part of the dough is thicker than the outer edges.

An easy method for doing this is to use a rolling pin with one hand and roll it towards the center while using your other hand to turn the piece of dough in a circular motion.

Repeat the steps for the rest of the pieces.

Now take your filling out of the fridge. Scoop out a generous portion of the filling (about 1.5-2 tablespoons (Tbsp)) onto the piece of dough.

Now, grab the opposite edges of the bun and bring them together in the center, and pinch them together. Repeat this for all of the edges until the bun is sealed.

Next, pinch the top of the bun while rotating with your other hand to twist and seal up the top of the bun. Finally, flip the bun over and gently roll it on your countertop to fully seal the bun and make it into a perfect round shape.

Repeat this process for all of the other pieces.
Once done, place the buns onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper and cover the buns with plastic wrap or a towel and let them proof in a warm place for about 40 minutes.

While the buns are proofing, prepare an egg wash by whisking 1 egg together with 1/2 teaspoon of milk and set it aside.
When the buns are done proofing, preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C) and apply the eggwash on top of the buns.

Now bake the buns for 17-18 minutes at 350°F (180°C) or until the top of the buns is golden brown.
While the buns are baking, prepare a sugar glaze by adding your sugar and water into a saucepan. Heat up the saucepan on medium heat while constantly stirring the saucepan. Once the sugar has fully melted, remove the saucepan from the stove and set it aside.

Once the buns are done baking, remove them from the oven and apply the sugar glaze on top of the buns.

Let the buns cool down for 5-10 minutes, and then serve them while still hot!

Tips

Put the char siu filling in the fridge to allow it to solidify and make it easier to wrap when filling the dough.
Add a little oil or water to your hands to shape the dough into a large round ball after it has finished kneading in the stand mixer. This will make handling the dough a lot easier and less sticky.
When proofing the dough, make sure to place it in a warm place, such as the inside of your oven or microwave, along with a bowl of hot water. This will ensure that you’re dough is in an optimal environment for it to rise.
Place the buns on a wire rack after applying the sugar glaze to prevent condensation from building up underneath the buns on the baking tray.
Make the middle of the dough slightly thicker than the sides. This way, the filling will not leak out from the bottom when baking the baked barbecue pork buns, and it also makes it easier to fold the sides together when you’re sealing the dough.

Common Mistakes Beginners Make

Adding too much extra flour while handling the dough makes it drier after baking. Excess flour should not be used, even if the dough is very sticky and difficult to handle. Use a dough scraper instead.
Not sealing the buns properly causes the filling to leak out after the buns are baked.
Not making the center of the dough thicker than the sides causes the filling to potentially leak out while baking.

How Long Can I Store the Baked Char Siu Bao Buns For?

The buns can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

How to Reheat Baked Char Siu Bao

You can reheat the buns in the microwave. If you prefer to bake them, then warm them in the oven at 350°F until warm (approximately 8-10 minutes).

Recipes That Go Well With Baked BBQ Pork Buns

You might want to pair these baked BBQ pork buns with something sweet like my Hong Kong egg tart recipe or my taro sago with coconut milk pudding. Also, a nice cold beverage like my homemade soy milk recipe would be perfect to complement this salty snack.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Can I Use Dry Active Yeast Instead of Instant Yeast?

Yes, absolutely! If you’re using dry active yeast, make sure that you proof the yeast in a warm liquid such as water or milk along with some sugar (1 teaspoon). You should see the yeast foam up at the top and produce a very yeasty smell. If you see this, that means your yeast is good to use.

I Don’t Have Bread Flour, Can I Use All-Purpose Flour Instead?

Yes, but note that the texture won’t be nearly as good compared to using bread flour. I recommend using bread flour whenever you can for this Chinese baked char siu bao recipe.

I’m Lactose Intolerant, Can I Use Almond or Oat Milk Instead of Cow’s Milk?

Yes, it will also work.

How Come My Dough Is Not Rising?

There could be a number of reasons, such as the following:

Your yeast is dead. Check if your yeast is still alive by adding 1 tsp of yeast, along with 1 tsp of sugar, to 1/2 cup of warm water, give it a good mix, then let it sit for 10-15 minutes. If it starts to foam at the top with a very yeasty smell, then your yeast is still alive.
Your environment is too cold. Yeast rises best in a warm environment
You mixed in hot water with the yeast and killed it.
You didn’t knead the dough sufficiently enough. Use the window-pane test to check if your dough has been kneaded properly. Grab a small piece of the dough, stretch it out with your fingers until it is somewhat translucent, and light can pass through. If the dough doesn’t tear or has a very minor tear, then it is ready.

I Don’t Own a Stand Mixer, Can I Knead the Dough by Hand?

Yes, you can! Check out my pineapple bun recipe for instructions on how to knead milk bread dough by hand. There’s also a video attached to the article demonstrating how to do this as well.

Note that the dough will be very sticky and difficult to handle, which is why using a stand mixer is recommended.

Can I Freeze the Baked Char Siu Bao Buns?

Yes, place the buns in an airtight container and freeze for up to 1 month after baking them.

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