Fanzhen Baked Flatbread 范镇火烧
Fanzhen Baked Flatbread is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
Image notes
Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited.
Fanzhen Baked Flatbread (范镇火烧) is a layered bread from Fanzhen (范镇) in Tai’an’s Daiyue District (岱岳区), with a crisp exterior and soft centre. Its dough combines risen dough, fresh dough and old dough in carefully balanced proportions.
How it is made
A 2011 Tai’an government feature follows the Xu family’s method. The baker rolls and stretches dough into a strip, spreads it with peanut oil mixed with black sesame, rolls it again and adds a second shortening. This contains a little donkey fat combined with peanut oil and black sesame, heated before fine flour is stirred in.
The strip is coiled, pressed with three fingers and rolled into a thick round. Baking reveals rings on the surface. The breads are turned on the oven top and moved into its drawers to finish cooking.
Ingredients
Donkey fat was traditionally used for the shortening. Tai’an’s separate 2011 food entry notes that peanut oil had become more common among market producers..
Where it comes from
The Xu family marks its bread with a wooden stamp bearing the character Xu (徐). Tai’an’s feature also recalls older breads that could be pulled into an unbroken, flower-like spiral. It explicitly links that effect to the stone-milled flour used in the past.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-26. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.