Pork Tamale Buns

Still cooking out of Artisan Bread in 5 Min a Day. What's interesting is that there is not only bread recipes but also recipes that showcase the bread as well. Found a recipe that incorporates Mexican pulled pork into a cornmeal dough to make a tamale-like bun. Of course, I decided to make this recipe because I needed to make another batch of dough - they say you can skip washing your dough bucket by just making the next batch of dough in it, and anything that limits my dish washing is something I will do! At this point, I happened to be low on flour and not in a position to go to the store so was looking through the book for ideas based on what I had around. I came across a recipe for Broa, a Portuguese Cornbread. The recipe called for cornmeal and I had polenta, which is coarser than cornmeal. So I decided to try to make it finer in the food processor.

Before

After. I don't really know if I made it any finer, really. But it was a thought...

Here's the dough. You can see the specks of the cornmeal. Next it was on to making the pork filling.

The recipe called for making the pulled pork on the stove top. I think it would easily transfer to the crock pot and you could just set it all day. If you are interested in the recipe, leave a message with your email and I'll send it to you.

Now all pulled. Pretty tasty. The recipe makes waay more that you need for the buns (and I used all of the cornbread dough - 4 recipes - 16 buns). Was great in a taco. Lots of flavor, very Mexican but not spicy.

Now on to making the buns:

Take 1/4 of the dough and divide that into fourths. Pile in some of the pork and sauce, then pinch the dough around the filling.

Still am refusing to buy a pizza stone, so I put these into bread pans.

Here are the baked buns. Of course, they all fused together...

Here's a look at the inside of the bun. The idea was that these were to be like tamales with the corn meal bread. They were very tasty and it was nice to have the portion control, but I don't know if I would make the connection to a tamale. Froze 2 buns at a time and am looking forward to enjoying these over the next few months - or I was planning on using them as collateral in a food swapping event. We will see.