A Hebei specialty most associated with Fengrun in Tangshan: small, round, sesame-crusted baked buns sized and shaped like a Chinese chess or weiqi piece. The dough is short-textured, made with fat worked through it for flaky layers, then wrapped around a sweet bean-paste or savory meat filling, rolled into the squat round form, coated in sesame and baked crisp in a jar-style oven. The crust is browned and crisp, the inside soft and short; plain and filled versions both exist.
A pastry of the Jidong region long claimed by several Hebei localities; the version best documented belongs to Fengrun county-town in Tangshan, which sat on a busy way-station of the old imperial road east of Beijing where travelers and merchants passed constantly. By local account it took form in the Guangxu era at the Yushengxuan eatery, next door to the Shuangsheng-hao inn: a scholar bound for the capital examinations is said to have suggested making the buns small as chess pieces and filling them with sweet bean paste, and the cook Niu Chaoyan worked fat into the dough so they would keep on the road, producing chess-piece buns with bean-paste, pork and beef fillings that stayed good for over a month. In the late 1920s the Jiumeizhai eatery sent a cook to learn the craft, switched to fine flour and developed the pork filling. In 2019 the Fengrun chess-piece-bun technique was listed as a Tangshan municipal intangible cultural heritage.
A squat little round the size of a thick chess piece, the top and sides matted with toasted sesame, the crust a deep crisp brown. It cracks open to fine flaky leaves of pastry, the fat in the dough leaving it short and tender rather than chewy. A bean-paste one is gently sweet, a meat one savory with scallion and bean sauce and a touch of sesame oil. Crisp outside, soft within, and famously slow to go stale — said to hold its taste for a month on the road.
Two doughs do the work: a plain water dough and a short dough of flour rubbed with fat. The water dough is rolled out, the fat-rich dough laid in, then folded, rolled and turned so the fat separates the sheet into many thin leaves — the flake of a proper chess-piece bun comes from this layering, and from using fat rather than water to bind, which is also what keeps the bun from drying for weeks. The rolled dough is cut into small portions, each pressed open, filled, gathered shut and turned by hand into the squat chess-piece round, then the smooth face is pressed into sesame. Baking is traditionally done in a jar-style oven heated above and below at once, so both faces brown and crisp; a home oven around 180°C does the same in roughly ten to fifteen minutes.
Variations
Fillings split the dish: sweet red-bean paste is the older line, with savory pork and beef added later; some makers add scallion, bean sauce and sesame oil to the meat. Plain unfilled rounds exist too. Sources differ on the dough fat — plain oil in most accounts, chicken fat in others — and the bun is baked in a traditional jar oven or a home oven alike. The chess-piece form is claimed by several Hebei towns; in Tangshan the Fengrun lineage is the documented one, carried on by named heritage makers.
On the Palate
Where Chess-Piece Baked Bun sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
8 steps · 35 min active + 25 min waiting
- 112 min
Make a plain water dough: mix flour with water until smooth, then let it rest.
- 28 min
Make a short dough: rub flour together with fat (and a little water) into a crumbly, cohesive oil-paste.
- 310 min
Roll the water dough into a sheet, lay the short dough inside, fold and seal, then roll and turn it several times to build thin flaky layers.
Watch outRoll and turn without pressing so hard the fat squeezes through — if the sheet tears and the oil-paste leaks, the layers weld together instead of staying flaky.
- 44 min
Cut the layered dough into small portions; press each open into a cup.
- 56 min
Chop pork with scallion, bean sauce and sesame oil for the meat filling (or use sweet red-bean paste).
- 68 min
Place filling in each cup, gather it shut, and turn it by hand into a squat chess-piece round.
- 73 min
Press the smooth face into sesame seeds to coat it.
- 814 min
Bake in a jar-style oven heated above and below, or in a home oven around 180°C for ten to fifteen minutes, until the crust is browned and crisp.
Watch outPull them when the crust is evenly golden and the sesame smells toasted — the shell should feel light and crisp, not pale and soft.
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