Steamed bun
Classic white mantou
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| Alternative names | Chinese steamed bun, Chinese steamed bread |
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| Type | Bread, dim sum |
| Place of origin | China |
| Main ingredients | Wheat flour, water, leavening agents |
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| Mantou | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 馒头 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 饅頭 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 面头 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 麵頭 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | mántou |
| IPA | [mǎn.tʰou] |
| Wu | |
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Shanghainese Romanization |
meu上 doe平 |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | maan4 tau4 |
| Southern Min | |
| Hokkien POJ | bán-thô or bán-thâu |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Southern Min | |
| Hokkien POJ | mī-thâu |
Mantou (Chinese: 馒头), often referred to as Chinese steamed bun, is a type of cloud-like steamed bread or bun popular in Northern China. The name mantou is said to have originated from a tale about Zhuge Liang.
Mantou are typically eaten as a staple food in northern parts of China where wheat, rather than rice, is grown. They are made with milled wheat flour, water and leavening agents. In size and texture, they range from 4 centimetres (1.6 in), soft and fluffy in the most elegant restaurants, to over 15 centimetres (5.9 in), firm and dense for the working man's lunch. As white flour, being more heavily processed, was once more expensive, white mantou were something of a luxury in pre-industrial China.
Traditionally, mantou, bing, and wheat noodles were the staple carbohydrates of the northern Chinese diet, analogous to rice, which forms the mainstay of the southern Chinese diet. They are also known in the south, but are often served as street food or a restaurant dish, rather than as a staple or home cooking. Restaurant mantou are often smaller and more delicate and can be further manipulated, for example, by deep frying and dipping in sweetened condensed milk.
They are often sold pre-cooked in the frozen section of Asian supermarkets, ready for preparation by steaming or heating in the microwave oven.
A similar food, but with a savory or sweet filling inside, is baozi.Mantou is the older word, and in some regions (such as the Jiangnan region of China, and Korea) mantou (or the equivalent local reading of the word) can be used to indicate both the filled and unfilled buns, while in Japan the equivalent local reading of the word refers only to filled buns.
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Wikipedia