Hard to believe but after living in San Francisco for more than twenty years I must confess that I'd never tasted a Pineapple Bun until just recently when I made them myself from a Cook's Illustrated recipe. It sounds a bit silly to admit since my neighborhood is literally inundated with Chinese bakeries that sell this popular sweet bread. One taste of the soft, fluffy interior and crunchy sugar top crust and I was a goner.
The secret to this bread is tangzhong, a cooked flour and water
paste, that's added to the dough and makes the interior so light and
soft. I adore working with this dough - it is so forgiving and has the
most beautiful elasticity. You seriously can't mess it up!
The topping is piped in spirals over the proofed buns and is made of a butter, powdered sugar and flour mixture. In the oven it melts down the sides of the bread and bakes in to a crunchy crust, very similar to craquelin on a choux pastry.
I ended up filling my buns with Cook's Illustrated char siu or barbecue pork,
another staple dish in Chinese cuisine, which I recently posted to my blog. The savory, sweet filling was a
delicious complement to the pineapple bun. I brought samples of my first batch in to the office and my Chinese-American colleagues gave them the thumbs up. If that's not the seal of approval I don't know what is!
