Hanging-Oven Sesame Flatbread 吊炉烧饼
Hanging-Oven Sesame Flatbread is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
Hanging-Oven Sesame Flatbread (吊炉烧饼) is the layered, sesame-coated baked bread of Heze (菏泽), the city in south-western Shandong known in the past as Caozhou (曹州). A 2020 essay in the Heze Daily recalls Shandong neighbours baking it at home on a makeshift stove with a mud-plastered iron pot turned upside down on top, from whose inner wall the sesame-covered breads were taken out one by one.
How it is made
The dough is made from fine wheat flour and is pulled, beaten, coiled and kneaded in several stages. It is then wrapped around an oil paste (油瓢) seasoned with sesame oil, salt, fennel and Sichuan pepper. The baker cuts a pattern and coils the edge, brushes the top with malt syrup (糖稀), presses it into sesame seeds and puts it into the oven to bake.
Flavour and texture
A finished Hanging-Oven Sesame Flatbread is red shading into yellow on top. Pulled apart by hand, its base, lid and core come away from each other in separate layers; the Qilu Evening News describes it as browned outside and crisp within. The Heze Daily essay lists the layers of flavour as wheat, sesame, the seasoning and the sweetness of the malt syrup.
Where it comes from
In 2013 the Qilu Evening News put the history of the flatbread in Heze at about a hundred years and counted more than a hundred flatbread shops in the city. The Heze Daily essay says the bread is made mostly in family workshops, and recalls the old street in urban Heze where flatbread sellers were most concentrated, with a shop every few steps, selling salty, sweet, five-spice and meat-filled versions in several shapes.
How it is eaten
In Shan County (单县), in Heze, the county's milky-white mutton soup, which Dazhong Daily's Haibao News dates to 1807, is eaten with thin pancakes and chilli sauce, and Haibao News singles out Hanging-Oven Sesame Flatbread as a particularly good match for it.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Reference photo of a similar dish · 同类菜品参考照片A similar preparation is pictured; the local version may differ. 同类菜品参考照片，当地做法可能不同。Photo: N509FZ · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
