Caoxian Sesame Flatbread 曹县烧饼

Caoxian Sesame Flatbread (曹县烧饼) is the layered, sesame-topped flatbread of Cao County (曹县) in Heze (菏泽), a county on Shandong's border with Henan. It is sold from small stalls in the county town and in villages alike, and locals call making it 'da shaobing' (打烧饼, 'beating flatbread'), a name the writer Wei Xin (魏新), a Cao County native, links to the showy way the bakers work and to the county's reputation as a home of martial arts.

How it is made

A stall needs only a board and an oven welded from sheet iron. The baker mixes fine wheat flour into a dough, kneads it and pulls off portions, working each into three or four layers around an oil filling of sesame oil, salt, fennel and Sichuan pepper. The filled dough is pressed flat with the palm, a decorative edge is cut all round with a knife and the rim is shaped, the top is brushed with malt syrup and pressed into sesame seeds, and the round is slapped onto the wall of the oven to bake.

Flavour and texture

The baked surface is yellow shading into red. Pulled apart by hand, the flatbread separates into a lid, a core and a base, crisp outside and soft inside and strongly aromatic. It is at its best straight from the oven, when it is almost too hot to hold.

How it is eaten

It is eaten plain or filled, above all with other Cao County snacks. One is the county's braised beef (烧牛肉), which is marinated, fried in sesame oil and then simmered in a long-kept master stock. Another is yangrou duozi (羊肉垛子), boiled mutton left to cool, pressed into a block and sliced thin, made only once winter has set in; tucked into a hot flatbread it gives a mix of cold and hot. Wherever these meats are sold in Cao County, a flatbread stall stands next to them, so customers buy the bread first and then have the meat put inside.