Wucheng Griddled Meat Pie 武城旋饼

Wucheng Griddled Meat Pie (武城旋饼) is a thin-skinned pie packed with meat and baked over a wood fire on a bed of broken tiles, a traditional food of Wucheng County (武城县) in Dezhou (德州), Shandong. A Dezhou news report on iqilu.com (齐鲁网) gives it more than 400 years of history and notes that the name is also written in two other ways (煊饼, 悬饼). By legend the rebel leader Li Zicheng (李自成), passing through Wucheng on his way to take Beijing, stopped at the smell, watched the baker keep the pies spinning (旋, xuan) on the griddle, and gave them their name.

How it is made

The dough is pulled and kneaded until it reaches the "three shines": a smooth dough, a clean bowl and clean hands. It is rolled into a very thin strip, wrapped round a generous meat filling and pressed flat. The stove has one firebox fed with wood and two cooking places. The pie first sets on a flat griddle (鏊子) at the front, then moves to a pan at the back covered with a layer of broken tiles, where the gaps hold it off the metal. The baker turns the pies and brushes them with oil; as they bake, smoke fills the air and the toasty charcoal aroma works into the pie. The Wucheng baker Wang Shuyi (王书义) says an electric griddle cannot give the same flavour and makes the skin hard.

Flavour and texture

Dazhong (大众网) describes the pie as the size of a plate and a finger thick, glossy yellow-brown, with a crisp, flaky skin and a loose, tender filling: browned but not burnt, rich but not greasy. It carries a toasted aroma, a light, fresh aroma and the smell of sesame. Fresh from the fire, the outer skin is thin and brittle while the inner layer of dough blends into the filling.

Where it comes from

The Wucheng xuanbing making technique, based in Laocheng Town (老城镇), is on Wucheng County's first intangible heritage list and entered Dezhou's first municipal list in 2007. A local rhyme quoted by Dazhong names xuanbing among Wucheng's "three treasures", with watermelons and Gubeichun (古贝春) liquor.