Pork bao... Wow! (lot's of cellphone pics)

This was a 2-day cook that involved me smoking a pork butt on Saturday and then making the bao on Sunday. I smoked rubbed the butt with North Market Spices Ltd. BBQ rub and Don Marco's BBQ Booster. I scored it to allow more surface area for bark. I had though this thing was bone-in since it wasn't at all "floppy" (I normally get boneless from Costco). Low and behold, it was. Hooray, butcher! If I had known better, I would have rubbed the cavity too.

All done:

On Sunday, I made cole slaw and took the dough out of the fridge(I made it Saturday night). I pulled the left-over pork for the stuffing. 

I portioned the dough into 16 pieces and rolled them out into 4-inch rounds:

Here is the slaw with the sauce I mixed the pork with. Caliking commented that the pork dried out so I added in the mustard sauce to prevent this. I then placed pork then slaw on the round and made them real purdy with a pinch and twist pattern. I probably rolled the dough out too much as it ended up thin on the bottom.

Here is the slaw and sauce:

I forgot to take assembly shots so onto the cooking part. SWMBO'd and SWMBO-SIL were chomping at the bit so I had to speed things up. It was getting late. I don't have a bamboo steamer so I just used a stock pot and silicone steam basket. I placed parchment squares under the bao to prevent sticking. Swmbo didn't want steamed buns so I baked off 2/3 of them.

Here are the steamed bao:

Here are the baked ones:

Verdict?

Both were awesome! I only put slaw in about half for comparison(really because SWMBO is cabbage-averse). The dough was sweet and light which matched perfectly with the smokeiness and salt from the pork. The vinegar and pepper mix in the slaw gave a nice hot tanginess that made everything "pop". Since the slaw was heated, I don't know if I would do a mayo-based one. I served them with baked beans and slaw on the side. Sorry for the crappy plated shots, everyone was wolfing stuff down. I'm going to refine these and do a variety with a better presentation.