Beef-Filled Flatbread 牛肉馍

Beef-Filled Flatbread (牛肉馍) is a large round pie of thin dough layers rolled around minced beef, a local snack of Qiaocheng District (谯城区) in Bozhou (亳州), Anhui. Stalls in many parts of the city sell it, and eating Beef-Filled Flatbread for breakfast is a local habit that Farmers' Daily compares to Cantonese morning tea. It is on Bozhou's municipal list of intangible cultural heritage.

How it is made

The filling is good-quality yellow-cattle beef chopped to a paste and mixed with glass noodles, spring onion, ginger and other seasonings until it holds its shape. The dough is left to rest, pressed out by hand into thin sheets and rolled around the filling layer after layer until the pastry is paper-thin. The finished round, about 35 to 40 centimetres across and 3 to 5 centimetres thick in the Farmers' Daily description, is cooked in a special round flat pan over a charcoal fire banked under a layer of ash so that no flame shows. Oil is added and the bread is baked slowly over low heat, turned again and again, for about 30 minutes. A 2022 People's Daily report describes it cooked on an electric griddle instead, flipped several times until it browns.

Flavour and texture

Li Peng (李朋), fourth-generation heir of a Bozhou family recipe, describes the proper version as four layers of pastry with three layers of filling: the top and bottom layers crisp, the two middle layers soft. The filling in his shop is yellow-cattle beef with sweet-potato glass noodles. The outside comes out glossy and golden, crisp outside and tender within, and it is cut open with a knife when it comes out of the pan.

Where it comes from

Local tradition dates the bread to the Qing dynasty and credits a Hui family, named as the Hong family near Shuangsi (双寺) in one account and the Li family near the Huaxi Opera Tower (花戏楼) in another. A popular legend has Cao Cao (曹操), passing through his home commandery of Qiao (谯郡, today's Bozhou) in flight after the Battle of Red Cliffs, follow the smell to an old man's door and give the bread its name. According to Anhui News, the Li family did not teach the craft to outsiders before 1940 and began taking apprentices in the early 1980s.