Huangqiao Sesame Flatbread 黄桥烧饼
Huangqiao Sesame Flatbread is featured among the local specialties of Jiangsu.
Huangqiao Sesame Flatbread (黄桥烧饼) is a baked flatbread from Huangqiao town (黄桥镇) in Taixing (泰兴), Jiangsu, made from flour, oil and sesame and baked to a golden colour with a crisp crust.
How it is made
The bread grew out of the risen flatbread of Taixing, known as zhang shaobing (涨烧饼). It comes in sweet and savoury versions, and by tradition the two are told apart by shape: the sweet one is round and the savoury one is a long oval.
Over the years the bread was refined, took on more seasonings and moved away from the old risen flatbread, becoming a snack rather than a staple. Its fillings grew to more than twenty kinds, among them spring-onion oil, pork floss, diced chicken, ham, pickled greens (xuecai, 雪菜), white sugar, candied orange, osmanthus and red-bean paste.
Where it comes from
Huangqiao town first had flatbreads of this kind in the Song dynasty. The bread is also called zhiqian shaobing (支前烧饼), the front-support flatbread. During the Battle of Huangqiao in the summer of 1940, twelve mills and sixty flatbread ovens in the town baked risen flatbreads day and night, and local people carried the breads to the front lines in support of the New Fourth Army (新四军).
In 1949, at the invitation of Chen Yi (陈毅), the town's flatbread was improved into the Huangqiao flatbread and chosen for the state banquet marking the founding of the People's Republic. It was named a Chinese national snack in 2003. In Huangqiao, people visiting friends and relatives usually take a batch of the flatbreads with them.
More dishes to compare
Explore related local specialties and compare their names, preparation notes and ordering guidance.
Suzhou rice-flour sweets 苏式糕团 →
Another Jiangsu snack tradition, made from rice flour, where Huangqiao Sesame Flatbread is a wheat bread baked crisp with sesame.
Questions before you order
How do you tell sweet and savoury Huangqiao Sesame Flatbread apart?
By shape: traditionally the sweet version is round and the savoury version is a long oval.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Reference photo of a similar dish · 同类菜品参考照片A similar preparation is pictured; the local version may differ. 同类菜品参考照片，当地做法可能不同。Photo: N509FZ · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
