Yanzhou Big Baked Flatbread 兖州大烧饼
Yanzhou Big Baked Flatbread is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
Yanzhou Big Baked Flatbread (兖州大烧饼) is a leavened, sesame-covered flatbread from Yanzhou (兖州), now a district of Jining (济宁). Dazhong Net (大众网), the Shandong provincial news site, lists it among Jining's local specialities and describes it as a folk food custom of south-western Shandong and Yanzhou. The Shandong Department of Culture and Tourism names it among Yanzhou District's intangible cultural heritage items, and the district cultural centre has promoted it on national television.
How it is made
The method is simple, but Dazhong Net stresses that each step has to be exact: the dough is fermented just enough, kneaded evenly, with the right amount of water and precisely judged heat. The baker spreads the dough on a stone and works it by hand into a round that is thicker at the edge than in the centre, flicks sesame seeds over it and uses a brush to pass it into the oven.
The bread is baked over charcoal. Makers use pear, pine or jujube wood charcoal, and each gives the bread a different aroma. A local legend holds that bread baked over pear-wood charcoal cured the Kangxi Emperor (康熙) of a cold. Sun Zhaozhu (孙照珠), a well-known baker living on Baiyitang Street (白衣堂街) in Yanzhou, told Dazhong Net that the bread is defined by four things: plenty of white sesame, a leavened dough, no added sugar and apple-wood charcoal. Four breads usually weigh one jin (500 grams), and 50 to 100 jin (25 to 50 kilograms) of dough is set to rise each morning.
Flavour and texture
Dazhong Net says the leavened dough gives the bread a sweetness with a slight sour edge that grows the longer it is chewed, and a fragrant, crisp crust. Yanzhou people credit the flavour to their wheat, saying that good water and good soil make good wheat.
Where it comes from
Dazhong Net says the bread is made in every township around Yanzhou. Xu Yueqiang (徐月强) of Yanzhou's public cultural service centre told Xinhua (新华网) that the district had earlier tried to promote the big flatbread, along with braised chicken and beef, as a local speciality, without making it widely known.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. 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.
