Griddle Pancake Rolled with Fried Dough 烙馍卷馓子

How it is made

The two halves come from the same raw materials, flour and water. Sanzi is dough rolled by hand and fried in hot oil; people of the Song dynasty called it hanju (寒具), food for the Cold Food festival when fires were not lit. Laomo is made on an aozi (鏊子), a flat iron griddle, by spreading batter over its surface.

Because the pancake has only one layer, some places call it danbing (单饼), single pancake, and travellers call it zhuangmo (壮馍), a bread to send someone off on a journey.

Ingredients

Besides the golden sanzi, the Xuzhou roll takes fillings such as spring onion, egg, greens, fermented bean paste (jiangdou, 酱豆), salted fermented beans (yandouzi, 盐豆子), sesame paste and chilli sauce, and sometimes Chinese toon shoots and green peppers. The seasonings run from hot to sour to salty, and the salted beans are singled out as salty, savoury and spicy.

In Xuzhou the pancake is also rolled around fried dough sticks, lamb, hot-and-sour shredded potato, tofu skin and salted duck egg. Xuzhou people also roll laomo in laomo: one small restaurant serves it under the name Gupeng Yijue (古彭一绝), a whole laomo wrapped around shredded laomo fried crisp and golden, scattered with coriander stems and crushed peanuts.

Flavour and texture

In an essay in the Guangming Daily (光明日报) in August 2026, the writer Du Huaichao (杜怀超) describes the appeal as the softness of the pancake against the crunch of the fried dough, with the wheat aroma of the flour in the same bite. He writes that people from Xuzhou grow up on the roll, and that those coming home head for a street restaurant and order it with di guo ji (地锅鸡), chicken cooked in an iron pot, and bazi rou (把子肉), braised pork belly.