Bread dough

You can make this yourself, or buy ready-make dough in the frozen foods sections of your supermarket. In addition to baking them into bread, you can use them to make breadsticks, pizza dough, buns, rolls, and bagels.
 

Pastry shell

These are small cups made of puff pastry that are meant to hold individual portions of savory fillings. Look for them in bakeries or among the frozen foods in supermarkets.
 

Pie pastry = pie crust dough

This pie dough is easy enough to make at home, or you can find it ready-make among the frozen foods of most supermarkets.
 

Puff pastry

This is dough topped with chilled butter that's rolled out and folded again and again until there are hundreds of layers of butter and dough. The dough expands and the layers separated when it's baked, creating a marvelously rich and flaky pastry. Puff pastry is used to make croissants, pie crusts, and many other sweet and savory pastries. You can make puff pastry yourself, but it's hard to improve on the ready-made stuff sold in the frozen foods section of many supermarkets. Let frozen puff pastry defrost for about 30 minutes before you roll it out, but don't let it get too warm or it will become sticky.

Seitan = Wheat meat

This is a vegetarian meat substitute that's rich in protein, low in fat, and chewy enough to pass for steak or chicken. It's made by mixing gluten flour or wheat flour with water, kneading it, washing away the starch with water, and then cooking the rubbery gluten that remains in a flavored broth. The seitan can then be sliced or shaped however you like and then fried, steamed, baked, or added to stews. Look for packages or tubs of it in the refrigerated sections of Asian markets and health food stores. You can also buy it in the form of meat-flavored sausage, salami, and deli cuts. Store seitan in the refrigerator for up to ten days, or for up to six months in the freezer.

Dumplings

Dumplings are very popular in China, and there is a wide variety of different shapes and size, with fillings ranging from pork and vegetables to mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Some enclose the filling in a very thin dough skin (jiao zi) while others use a dough make from a glutinous buns (bao zi) filled with meat or a sweet bean paste.

The best way to experience the diversity and delicious flavors of dumplings is to indulge in dim sum, that wonderful procession of tasty morsels that the Cantonese have elevated to an art form. Although dumplings originated in northern China, it was in Canton that the practice developed of enjoying these snacks with tea at breakfast or lunch time.

Dim sum literally means "dot on the heart" and indicates a snack or refreshment, not a full blown meal. Although the range of dishes available on a dim sum menu now embraces other specialties ( spring rolls, wontons and spare ribs, for instance), dumplings remain the essential items.

What is more, unlike the majority of dim sum, which are so complicated to make that they can only be prepared by a highly skilled chef, dumplings are comparatively simple to make at home. Both jiao Zi and bao zi are available ready-make from Asian or Chinese store - the former are sold uncooked and frozen, and the latter are ready-cooked and sold chilled.

Peking Dumplings

These crescent-shaped dumplings are filled with minced pork, greens and spring onions and seasoned with salt, sugar, soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. In northern China they are eaten for breakfast on New Year's Day, but are available all year round, and are often served as snack or as snacks or as part of a meal.

Steamed Buns

Steamed buns are to Asia what baked bread is to the West, and bao (filled buns) are the Chinese fast food equivalent of hot dogs, hamburgers and sandwiches. There are two main types of steamed buns, either plain or filled. The plain, unfilled buns made from leavened dough are treated in much the same way as plain boiled rice and are intended to be eaten with cooked food. Then there are filled buns (bao zi). The name literally means "wraps" and these can be savory or sweet. The sweet ones usually contain either a lotus seed paste or a sweet bean paste filling and are usually eaten cold. Savory bao zi come with a wide range of fillings, the most common being pork, and a very popular type is filled with Cantonese Char siu (honey-roasted pork). These are available ready-made, and are best eaten hot.

Also available ready-made, but uncooked, are what are known as Shanghai dumplings, much smaller than char siu bao, and each consisting of minced pork wrapped in a thin skin of unleavened dough