Sanxia Golden Horn Bread 三峡金牛角
Sanxia Golden Horn Bread is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Sanxia Golden Horn Bread (三峡金牛角) is a horn-shaped bread from Sanxia District (三峡区) in New Taipei City (新北市), Taiwan, where Chinese Wikipedia describes it as a well-known traditional pastry and gift to take home. It looks like a croissant, and some foreigners and media call it the 'Taiwanese croissant' (台湾可颂). The method is different, though: the dough is pressed dense rather than laminated and proved.
Where it comes from
The bread was developed by Luo Fu-ching (罗福清). In 1958 he opened the Fumeixuan bakery (福美轩饼铺) in the market behind Sanxia's Qingshui Zushi Temple (清水祖师庙), making Chinese wedding cakes, peach-shaped birthday buns and other traditional pastries. Around the late 1980s or early 1990s, he and his wife ate a firm Western-style bread on a flight, reportedly a Filipino one. Back in Taiwan, he spent about half a year trying to reproduce it and settled on the shortening used in Chinese pastry to give the crust its layers and crunch.
Media coverage around 2001 and tourism development on Sanxia Old Street (三峡老街) made it Sanxia's signature product. Several horn-bread shops moved onto the old street after its restoration was finished in 2007. In 2008, Taipei County listed it among its ten best gifts to take home. Dozens of competing brands followed, and so did a family quarrel. In 2006, Matsu Daily reprinted an ETtoday report: Luo's eldest son had taken over the original shop, and a sister and her husband had opened another horn-bread shop a few streets away in Sanxia that also called itself the original.
How it is made
Chinese Wikipedia classes golden horn bread as a hard bread. The dough goes through a pressing machine again and again to push out the air, so the crumb is tight and has no holes, unlike the airy, honeycombed crumb of a croissant. The dough is shaped in a spiral to form the horn. During baking the surface is brushed with plenty of butter, shortening and cheese, which gives the crust an almost fried finish, and some shops use milk powder imported from Australia.
Flavour and texture
The two pointed tips have the least dough and soak up the most fat, so they bake crisp like a biscuit and are counted as the best part. The middle has a close, spiral-layered crumb with a springy chew. Shops suggest eating it warm for a crisp outside and soft inside, at room temperature for the most crunch, or chilled, when it turns dense, like a steamed songgao (松糕) cake. Besides the plain horn, Sanxia shops sell filled versions such as chocolate, pineapple, matcha with red bean, and cranberry.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.