MUZIChinese Matrix
Flatbreads · FFET10225
Rolled dough spread with sesame paste and coated in sesame seeds, pan-seared or baked until crisp outside and soft inside.
A white porcelain plate holds golden-brown sesame flatbreads, their rolled dough enclosing sesame paste beneath white sesame seeds on crisp crusts with soft interiors, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
Shaobing, griddle bread, guokui, naan, spring pancakes and other wheat flatbreads.
Sesame shaobing is a flatbread made by rolling out dough, spreading it with sesame paste and pepper-salt, rolling it up and cutting it, coating the pieces in sesame seeds, and then pan-searing or baking them until crisp outside and soft inside. This old Beijing snack has a 2020 Beijing Culinary Association recipe and a Beijing-style version by a Sichuan-food recipe writer. Shaobing is a family of flatbreads with local types; neither of the two listed overviews dates sesame shaobing itself, and no dated text naming it was found for this entry.
Sesame shaobing is a northern Chinese flatbread. The dough is rolled out, spread with sesame paste and pepper-salt, rolled up and cut, coated all over in sesame seeds, pan-seared and then finished over low heat, so that the skin is crisp and the inside soft.3,4,5
No dated text naming sesame shaobing was found. The cited texts about this flatbread’s older roots have not been checked, so no date is given on that basis.1,2
Sesame shaobing is an old Beijing snack, with a 2020 Beijing Culinary Association recipe and another Beijing-style version. Shaobing is common across northern China, with local types including Zhoucun and Huangqiao shaobing.1,3,4
The dough is rolled out, spread with sesame paste and seasoning, rolled up and cut, brushed or dipped in soy sauce or soy water and coated in sesame seeds, then pan-seared or baked. The two versions use yeast dough and hot-water dough respectively, with different amounts of sesame paste, seasonings, temperatures and times.4,5
Sesame shaobing is a breakfast food in northern China and Taiwan, often eaten with youtiao. The listed material gives no other reason.5
Shaobing has local types. Zhoucun shaobing in a 2020 Shandong heritage day report is another Shandong type; the Fangshan tea house of 1925, featured in a 2025 report, served ground-meat shaobing. Both differ from the sesame shaobing here, which the earlier report does not mention.1,6,7
Legend has it that the Han general Ban Chao brought back a roasted flatbread from the Western Regions, where it was a foreign bread called hubing. The tale speaks of shaobing as a whole kind of flatbread, not of sesame shaobing in particular, and both the Chinese and English Wikipedia entries present it as a legend.
Told in: A folk legend found in the Chinese and English Wikipedia entries on shaobing, both of which mark it as a legend.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
I make sesame shaobing at home in a frying pan, and this is my simplified home version: a yeast dough, a filling of sesame paste, sesame oil and ground Sichuan pepper, and sesame seeds outside. The amounts for the dough and filling follow the former recipe, by a writer on Sichuan food, though I use less pepper, and the 30-minute rest and the pan times also come from it. The latter recipe, by another author, uses a hot-water dough and a much hotter oven, and I did not follow it. The soy-water mix, the amount of seeds and the way I roll are my own choices at home.
Allergens: wheat, sesame, soy
