Zixi Bread 资溪面包
Zixi Bread is featured among the local specialties of Jiangxi.
Zixi Bread (资溪面包) is not one particular loaf but the bread made by bakers from Zixi County (资溪县) in Fuzhou (抚州), Jiangxi, a mountain county at the western foot of the Wuyi Mountains (武夷山脉) on the border with Fujian. Although the county produces none of the raw materials for bread, Xinhua reports that more than 40,000 of its people work in the trade and run about 16,000 shops in over 1,000 cities, and the Economic Daily calls it "中国面包之乡" ("China's home of bread").
Where it comes from
The trade traces back to 1987, when Zhang Xiewang (张协旺), a young man just out of the army, used the baking he had learned in the forces to open the Lujiang Bakery (鹭江面包店) in neighbouring Yingtan (鹰潭). He came from Yangfang Village (杨坊村) in Matoushan Town (马头山镇). When news of his earnings reached home, fellow villagers followed him into bread; Xinhua reports that nine in ten households in Yangfang now work in the trade and that the village is called China's first bread village.
Xu Quanlong (徐全龙), who opened a bakery in Hangzhou (杭州) in 1993, told the Economic Daily that in the late 1980s and early 1990s about half of the bakeries in East China's six provinces and one municipality were run by Zixi people. First-generation bakers later set up a trade association, the county government opened a bread industry office in 2004, and the collective brand "Zixi Bread" was approved in 2018.
Xinhua quotes internet users saying that you may never have been to Zixi but you have surely eaten bread made by Zixi people, and it names the popular chains Baoshifu (鲍师傅) and Luxihe (泸溪河) among the brands with Zixi people behind them. In the county itself, the Zixi Bread Food Industrial City (资溪面包食品产业城) has a sightseeing factory, a bread square, a hands-on baking hall and a bread culture museum, and the county holds a bread culture festival.
How it is made
Xinhua reports that hand kneading is now hard to find in Zixi County's bread companies: the rolling pin and the old dough jar have given way to automatic lines on which mixing, proofing and baking are all computer-controlled. In one returnee baker's factory the Economic Daily saw hand-made bread, sliced bread, croissants and European-style loaves; the bread is vacuum-packed within 24 hours and sent out by refrigerated truck, and the range is built around low-sugar and low-fat products.
At the Quanlong art-cake training base (全龙艺术蛋糕培训基地) on Chengbei Avenue (城北大道) in the county town, bakers show visitors trying their hand at bread how iced water is used when the temperature is high to keep the dough between 26 and 28°C, the best range for fermentation.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.