Yung Sing Pastry Shop Tofu Buns

There was once this little Chinese bakery in downtown Toronto, south of the towering gothic structures at University College, just when the city changed character and became something of an eclectic mix of college town, Chinatown, and an almost-bohemian village. Baldwin Village, it was called, and the bakery was the Yung Sing Pastry Shop. Tiny, old (since the 60s), one of those places you’d miss easily if you didn’t know where it was or how beloved.

I was introduced to the Yung Sing Pastry Shop by a friend who would later become my husband’s cousin—she took me on a tour of sights around the University of Toronto, most memorably sneaking me into the stacks at Robarts library with the aid of an old ID card, and then we walked south towards Baldwin and got Yung Sing’s very famous, very cherished tofu buns and ate them while walking all over downtown Toronto. There were others: fried rice buns, vegetable buns, barbecue pork buns, bean paste buns, those terribly guilt-inducing (I mean, who could eat just one?) but deliciously crisp-chewy jian dui or deep fried golden sesame balls, and more. But Chinese food in a bun was what Yung Sing was mostly all about, and whodathunk it? Dim Sum redefined. Dim Sum in a paper bag. It was just brilliant.

When I became a student myself at U of T, I made beelines for Yung Sing. The tofu buns were a buck-seventy; dollar options were many. A whole lunch under $5? For a college student? Gosh yes!

I got to loving their fried rice buns because they held up for a day or two better than the Tofu/veggie ones, and I planned my walks home from classes at U of T accordingly. I always walked, wind, rain or snow, partly to save on subway tokens, partly because the city was just friendly like that, wanting you to walk. And it was a sad day when I got to Yung Sing too late, and they’d run out. They were that popular, so they often did.

I took my boys to the shop in 2007, my younger one still baby-in-a-sling. I’m so glad I did—the pastry shop closed in 2009 “for renovation” and hasn’t opened back since. I’m not the only one who misses the place; many have mourned its loss. But not so many have tried to keep the Yung Sing legacy alive by recreating those buns, so I thought: why not? There is a cookbook, David Ko’s 1982 Yung Sing Dim Sum Recipes (A Chinese Snackbook), apparently self-published (by Ko’s Dim Sum Cooking Centre) but only on reference hold at the Toronto Public Library so felt for a long while up to me and my memory of things and tastes to get them right.

Then I found Sacha Chua, who had posted a recipe for Gai Mei Bao or Chinese Cocktail buns with a coconut filling, and between her notes for dough and the recipe she very kindly sent me from the cookbook–this is about as close to that remembered original as I suppose I’m ever going to get. It doesn’t help much that David Ko does not provide instructions, which aren’t hard to infer from the ingredient list I suppose, but each act of interpretation adds a sliver of extra distance from the imagined “original.” And of course there are ingredient variations: bamboo shoots not being the same here, bean sprouts hard to reproduce, and who knows what “onion flakes” are? And by the way how wet can the filling be to hold up in that dough?

I’ve made these buns four times now, so I think I have them down, and they’re both every bit the original and completely from my Pondicherry kitchen. But they do make me recall vividly that young undergrad walking about that lovely city which nurtured me in that exciting phase of life when all things were yet open and waiting to be learned, and the world was a place of wonder and inspiration. Really in the end perhaps that’s all the taste and texture that matters.

Below are images of the process, which mostly speak for themselves.

The dough after the first rise, punched down, and cut into 16 bits which are now waiting to be filled. The dough bits at this stage always resemble the sacks of laundry we used to prepare to be sent to the dhobi ghaat, while still in [Rishi Valley] school.

Rolling out to a hand-sized round, filling, and pinching the edges into a ruffle to close:

Tuning the stuffed dough ball over and rolling just slightly to make it smooth, allowing to rise a second time, brushing with beaten egg so the baked breads get this lovely golden hue you see below to the right:

And finally the “Choy Bow” recipe from David Ko’s book, kindly provided by Sacha Chua, for all you purists out there who want the authentic original. My recipe follows below, and it’s mostly the same but with veggie and other minor egg modifications plus cup measurements rather than metric, which I find so impossible to follow while working quick-quick in the kitchen.