Xiatang Sesame Flatbread 下塘烧饼

How it is made

The dough is mixed and leavened with water at about 80 degrees Celsius, then wrapped around a filling of meat seasoned with salt and oil. The maker rolls it into an even round, dabs it with water, brushes on sesame oil and scatters sesame seeds over the top. Then the bread is flipped onto the back of the hand and slapped quickly onto the inside wall of the oven, where it puffs up and turns flaky. After three to five minutes it has gone from white to orange-gold and is lifted out with a spatula.

Ge Degui (葛德贵), the Hefei heritage bearer for the bread, names the oven first. Called "天锅地灶" ("heaven pot, earth stove"), it is a mud-plastered stove on a steel stand more than a metre high, with an iron pot turned upside down on top so that it forms a dome over the fire. The door is set in the side and the fuel is chestnut charcoal, which burns without flame or smoke and gives even heat. The makers keep a rhyme for the essentials: "干葱老姜陈猪油，牛头锅制反手炉，面到筋时还要揉，快贴快铲不滴油" ("dried spring onion, old ginger, aged lard; an ox-head pot for a back-hand oven; when the dough turns springy, knead it more; stick it fast, lift it fast, and no oil drips").

Flavour and texture

Xiatang Sesame Flatbread comes out round as a full moon and golden, crisp and toasted outside and tender within; the local description is fragrant, crisp, flaky and soft, savoury and rich. Since the 1980s bakers have added fillings such as dried preserved mustard greens (梅干菜), pork and lamb, and Ge Degui says he can make seven or eight flavours.

Where it comes from

Two legends explain the upturned pot. In one, Cao Cao's army, routed at Xiaoyaojin (逍遥津) in Hefei during the Three Kingdoms period and afraid to light open fires in Xiatang, turned its cooking pots over and baked bread on them over burning twigs. In the other, Zeng Guofan's (曾国藩) Hunan Army, camped at Xiatang during the Xianfeng reign of the Qing dynasty, won a victory after eating the bread. A 2021 report says the bread had taken its present form by the Song dynasty.

The Anhui commerce department rated it a quality snack in 1989, it entered Hefei's second municipal intangible-heritage list in 2010, and in 2021 it was named a provincial signature dish of Anhui.