Sanghwa-beop (Fermented Steamed Stuffed Buns)

History

Sanghwa is a leavened, filled, steamed bun: wheat-flour dough raised with a rice-wine or grain-koji (nuruk) starter, wrapped around a filling and steamed until it puffs soft. Korean tradition places it in the Chinese steamed-bun (mantou) family, entering Korea during the Goryeo period through Yuan-era contact; scholars suggest mandu was imported under the altered name 'ssanghwa,' and its early commercial popularity is attested by the Goryeo song Ssanghwajeom ('The Sanghwa Shop'). Over the Joseon period the terms drifted apart — sanghwa for the leavened bun, mandu for jiaozi-type dumplings — and sanghwa eventually faded, surviving today mainly in Jeju's sangae-tteok. Jang Gye-hyang's c.1670 book places its sanghwa method in the dough-and-noodle section, cited as one of the earliest concrete written recipes for the leavened bun. Fittingly for one of the book's longest, most technical entries, she walks through the whole ferment: cooking a bran-and-rice gruel, drawing liquid off sliced nuruk to raise the dough over several days, then filling the buns — a sweet honeyed red-bean paste, or a savory mix of cucumber, radish, and mushrooms (seogi, pyogo) fried in seasoned oil with pine nuts and black pepper — before steaming. As a wheat food it read as a warm-season treat, tied to the midsummer Yudu festival. Consistent with the whole manuscript, the pungency here is black pepper, not chili, which had not yet reached Korean kitchens.

Ingredients

• wheat
• doe (for the leaven gruel) wheat bran
• handful (for the gruel) rice
• nuruk (fermentation starter)
• spoonful good rice wine
• filling — cucumber, radish or hwachae vegetables
• seogi, pyogo or true mushrooms
• pine nuts and black pepper
• sweet soy sauce
• red beans
• honey

Instructions

1. Mill well-ripened wheat, winnow and wash clean of stones, dry just enough, pound twice and sift out the coarse bran; from the third pounding, sift the good flour through fine sieve then ramie, removing all bran. Reserve the bran.
2. Make the leaven gruel: boil a handful of good rice in much water until dissolved; put 3 doe of bran in a vessel and pour the boiling gruel over, stirring, cooking it thick like bean gruel; cool.
3. Shave clean nuruk, soak it, discard the risen yellow water; add a spoonful of good wine to the cooled bran gruel, mix in the nuruk, and keep it in a place neither too warm nor cold.
4. Next day, cook more bran gruel in plain water and add it; after three days, at dawn strain the liquor loose (not too strong), then strain again through a fine wine-bag.
5. Knead the dough soft, dust cloth with flour, lay out the pieces; when the first-formed ones have risen slightly, they are ready to steam.
6. Savory filling: slice and boil soft cucumber/radish/hwachae vegetables; mince seogi/pyogo/true mushrooms, fry in sweet soy and oil, season with pine nuts and black pepper.
7. Sweet filling (summer): steam dehulled red beans and knead with honey; or mash, dry-roast over charcoal until dry, pound, sift and knead soft with honey so it keeps for days (plain dehulled beans spoil by the next day).
8. Steam: fix the steamer rim tight, space the buns apart, line with cloth, cover with a matching lid, seal the seam so no steam escapes; pack dry firewood under the pot, light a quick fire, let it burn down, re-fire, then remove — too slow a fire makes them gummy, too long a steam scorches them.