Bakpao: Indonesia

All along the streets of big towns one can spot vendors selling a type of hot steamed bread filled with beef, chicken or beans. Their carts have glass windows with Chinese-sounding names painted on them that enable buyers to see the inviting puffed up bread and select for themselves. A constantly active gas heater with a steamer on top is part of the getup.

According to a vendor I asked, the Chinese-sounding names are only to make the bakpao seem more authentic because bakpao originated in China as gastronome and epicurean el supremo Suryatini N. Ganie writes.

Now bakpao, notwithstanding the Chinese names on the carts, is a typical Indonesian foodstuff.

Bakpao began its culinary odyssey from regions in North China like Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Shanxi. In China’s cold northern regions where the Mongolian wind is particularly harsh, wheat is grown as a staple, not rice as in regions with milder climates.

The first wheat-grinding mills were found in North China. And the results were yeasted breads, various types of noodles and other wheat-based fare.

Beijing’s famous spring roll named chun juan is one of the best and comes stuffed with a wide variety of fillings. One of the tastiest chun juan is lumpia Semarang, which is filled with finely cut bamboo shoots and mostly served with a taucho (fermented bean sauce).

Back to the bakpao, there are now bakpao with a number of fillings in Indonesia.

And going with the trend toward mini foods, bite-sized bakpao are also served up at sophisticated tea parties, mostly filled with a tuna ragout.

There are numerous bakpao vendors in Jakarta but according to one of them, most of them come from the small town of Wonogiri in Central Java.

In Medan — the busy harbor city in North Sumatra where a great variety of international dishes are considered local ones — the bakpao is made from a softer dough.

More Chinese spices are used in the fillings and many dim sum restaurants serve at least one variety of bakpao.

Bakpao vendors are aware that people with time to kill, who are waiting in lines, for instance, are their best buyers.

I asked a friend whose husband has a busy medical practice in South Jakarta what time the bakpao vendor there usually turned up on the sidewalk.

“From the time we open up at four in the afternoon”, she said. Until when? “Until midnight or so if we have a lot of patients. But I think they work in shifts. Because another vendor will have taken the place of the earlier one”. Well, seems like a good business to be in.

I asked one vendor about the quantities of ingredients it took to make the some 50-60 bakpao he turns out daily. He said he went through 20-25 kilograms of wheat flour, five chickens, two or three kg mung beans, granulated sugar and four or five kg minced meat on average.

When I got home I tried out some vegetarian recipes a friend taught me for bakpao, with fillings like champignon ragout and Spanish paprika sufrito.

Not bad at all! It is worth trying the basic bakpao dough because the fillings can be really exciting when using your global culinary experiences! A quick satisfying meal, indeed.

Suryatini N. Ganie