Tsao Bing (燒餅)

Earlier this week I tried to make tsao bing (燒餅), which is a delicious pan-fried or baked breakfast treat that is often stuffed with meat floss or Chinese crueller and washed down with a nice, steaming bowl of soy milk. I made one attempt before when I first got my awesome Chinese Snacks cookbook from Wei-chuan, but it failed miserably (bad flour, bad cooking technique). In order to learn the proper method of cooking tsao bing, again I relied on my mom's example.

To make the tsao bing, I had to make the roux first, which is basically flour cooked in hot oil. While the roux cooled, I started on the dough. Like the "hot dough," I first mixed hot water into the flour, and then cold water was added to the dough mixture. Once the dough was rested and the roux cooled, I tried to assemble the bing. First, the dough was rolled out and roux, salt, and flour were poured on top of the flatten dough. Then, everything was rolled up jelly roll style before cutting into small pieces. I tried to pinch the ends before each cut, but the roux still spilled out of the dough, which made the counter, the hands, rolling pin, etc. oily and gross. I still don't know how to fix this problem, but even though the result wasn't very pretty, the bing was edible. Once I folded all the dough pieces, dippd the pieces in sesame, and rolled them flat, I pan fried them. I had to make sure the pan and the oil were hot before adding each piece. Once the bing was placed on the pan, the temperature was lowered. The tsao bing was done once each side turned slightly translucent and golden brown. Like I said before, the tsao bing wasn't pretty but it tasted really good so I guess mission (sort of) accomplished.