Taiwanese 100 Percent Whole Wheat Mantou

Mantou (Chinese: 饅頭, also called Chinese Steamed Bun) is a most common Taiwanese breakfast. Every day I steams 3 mantous and 3 cups of soy milk for my family.

Why we called it mantou?
A popular Chinese legend relates that the name mantou(饅頭) actually originated from the homophonous word mántóu(蠻頭), which literally means "barbarian's head".

The legend was set in the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) when Zhuge Liang, the Chancellor of the state of Shu Han, led the Shu army on a campaign against Nanman forces in the southern lands of Shu, which correspond to roughly present-day Yunnan, China, and northern Myanmar.

After subduing the Nanman king Meng Huo, Zhuge Liang led the army back to Shu, but met a swift-flowing river which defied all attempts to cross it. A barbarian lord informed him that in olden days, the barbarians would sacrifice 49 men and throw their heads into the river to appease the river deity and allow them to cross. As Zhuge Liang did not want to cause any more of his men to lose their lives, he ordered his men to slaughter the livestock the army brought along, and fill their meat into buns shaped roughly like human heads (round with a flat base). The buns were then thrown into the river. After a 

successful crossing, he named the bun "barbarian's head" (mántóu, 蠻頭, which evolved into the modern 饅頭).Another version of the story relates back to Zhuge Liang's southern campaign when he instructed that his soldiers who had fallen sick from diarrhea and other illnesses in the swampy region be fed with steamed buns with meat or sweet fillings.

Taiwanese whole wheat flour
I didn't know that there is some farmers plant wheat in Taiwan before, and a day I read a book which introduce a company(喜願小麥農友團) plant and produce the Taiwanese whole wheat flour. It's surprise me so much that someone plants wheat in my country. Then I went out and bought one bag of this flour. 

I modified the normal flour mantou recipe for the whole wheat flour and keep the direction simple and fast. Whole wheat flour version has more water then the normal version. The water in the dough is about 66% but the normal flour only 45%.


Ingredient:

whole wheat flour	500g	100%
water	370g	66%
sugar	40g	8%
oil	20g	4%
dry yeast	1 tea spoon
salt	1 tea spoon

Direction:

1. Combine water, sugar and yeast into a mixing bowl and stir it until developing a foam on the mix.
2. Add the flour into the mix, knead it to become a dough for 10 minutes.
3. Form the dough to ball and put it in a medium bowl, then wrap a small cloth for 1 hour.
4. Roll out the dough into 1/4" thin flat on the mat, then roll the flat dough into 2" wide log. 
5. Cut the log dough into 12 cubes.
6. Let the cubes stay for 40 minutes until double bigger.
7. Stem the cubes for 15 minutes.