Chinese Pastry Recipe

Almost all the recipes online for flaky Chinese pastry dough - the kind for lao po beng or other dim sum type pastries - were in grams and not cups and tbsps like I'm used to.  I have a food scale but it is in ounces not grams 'cause we're not metric, sorry! So this recipe will have to do until the time I ever get a gram scale.

The crust can also be used for flaky don tart (Chinese egg custard tart).

Ingredients:
Water dough
  • 1/2 cup flour or bread flour
  • 1/2 cup cake flour
  • 2 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • up to 70 ml water
  • 1/4 cup shortening or butter
Oil dough
  • 1 cup cake flour
  • 1/4 cup shortening
Instructions:
  • Mix up both doughs separately (use food processor).  Wrap each dough in plastic and chill in refrigerator for about 1/2 hour.  
  • When ready to use, divide the water dough into 4 equal pieces.  Divide the oil dough into 4 pieces also.  
  • Roll out a piece of water dough into a rectangle.  Roll out a piece of the oil dough and then distribute the oil dough fairly evenly (it will be crumbly, don't worry about broken pieces) over the rolled out water dough.  
  • Roll up the two dough layers, swiss roll style, and flatten again. Then roll swiss roll style again, the opposite way, and flatten once more. 
  • Use the flattened dough to wrap around filling like red bean paste, or as Chinese tart pastry.  Brush with egg wash.  Bake at 350°F until golden.
The original recipe I found for lao po beng (wife cake, sweet winter melon filling) is here:





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