Barkol Flaky Baked Bread 巴里坤油酥馍

Barkol Flaky Baked Bread (巴里坤油酥馍) is a round, flaky baked bread from Barkol Kazakh Autonomous County (巴里坤哈萨克自治县) in Hami (哈密), Xinjiang. The Barkol county government calls it a treat Barkol people cannot do without at New Year and other festivals, and it is one of the breads the county's bakeries make for the Spring Festival.

How it is made

In 2025 China News Service watched a couple at Hongshan Farm (红山农场) in Xinxing City (新星市), more than 100 kilometres from Barkol, make the bread. They put milk and eggs into the dough and mix flour, granulated sugar and black sesame into an oil-pastry filling. The filling is spread over a rolled-out sheet of dough, which is rolled into a tight log and cut into equal pieces. Each piece has its ends pinched shut, is pressed flat and shaped into a round cake of medium thickness, then baked.

Traditionally the breads were baked in ovens built of clay; the tools have since given way to temperature-controlled electric appliances, and this couple now bakes in an electric oven. Their bakery makes eight kinds of baked bread, including peanut, sunflower-seed, pumpkin and fenugreek versions.

Where it comes from

Making New Year breads is a long-standing Barkol custom, which Xinjiang Daily says came from the Central Plains (中原). Families used to start baking at Laba (腊八), the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, and the flaky bread sits alongside large and small steamed cakes, gourd-shaped dry buns and fried dough in the set. Xinjiang Daily describes the breads as fragrant with flaxseed oil, fenugreek and new-season wheat, and notes that Barkol is an important spring-wheat area whose flour is high in protein and gluten.

Before the Spring Festival, the Laotang (老唐) bakery in Barkol ships the bread by courier to buyers across China, according to the county government.