A claw-shaped baked bread from Shanghai with at least a century of documented history, named for the six radiating prongs formed by three deep cuts in leavened dough. A byproduct of morning flatbread-making, leftover old-dough was traditionally pressed into a barrel oven after the morning fires died, slow-baked five to six hours on residual heat, and sold for two cents each at street stalls. It traces its lineage to the Yangzhou and Zhenjiang specialty called Jingjiang Navel (京江脐), first documented in Shanghai's Times News on April 9, 1925. Now nearly vanished from the city.
Tiger Claw Bread's ancestor is the Zhenjiang specialty called Jingjiang Navel (京江脐) or Diamond Navel (金刚脐), a baked good from the Yangzhou-Zhenjiang corridor. Food historians further connect it to even older Jin Dynasty steamed cakes described in culinary texts as 'cracked in cross-pattern' (坼作十字), which evolved through the form called 橐驼脐 into the oven-baked claw shapes. By the Republican era the bread had migrated to Shanghai with waves of Jiangnan migrants, becoming a working-class breakfast item sold alongside flatbread and fried dough. The earliest confirmed Shanghai documentation is the Times News (时事新报) of April 9, 1925, establishing over a century of continuous presence. The bread was a sustainable byproduct practice: morning flatbread shops repurposed leftover old-dough at no waste, pressing it into the oven's dying heat after the main bake was done.
Snap off one prong from the six-clawed bread: the crust cracks with a clean, dry crunch that echoes in the hand. The interior is dense and slightly chewy, carrying the faint sourness of overnight old-dough fermentation and a lingering toasty note from hours in a slowly cooling oven—humble, satisfying, and entirely unlike any modern baked bread.
Old dough (老面) carries a living culture of lactic acid bacteria and wild yeasts that ferment over eight to twelve hours, producing organic acids and flavor esters that give the bread complexity. In the slowly cooling oven, radiant heat—far cooler than direct-fire baking—draws moisture gradually from center to crust over five to six hours, building a pronounced crust-to-crumb contrast without drying the interior. At these lower temperatures, Maillard browning favors the formation of pyrazines and furanones associated with toasty, nutty aromas rather than acrid char. The three radial cuts act as expansion vents, allowing the dough to push outward along controlled seams and produce the clean, spread-wing prong structure.
Variations
The Yangzhou and Zhenjiang originals—known as Jingjiang Navel or Diamond Navel—are rounder and denser without the radiating cuts, representing the ancestral form. Some Shanghai vendors finish the surface with white sesame seeds for fragrance. In Zhenjiang, a sweetened version using sugar-enriched dough persists in a handful of historic pastry shops.
On the Palate
Where Tiger Claw Baked Bread sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
6 steps · 45 min
- 1480 min
Prepare old dough starter the night before: mix 100g of saved old dough with 200g flour and 120ml water until incorporated; ferment at room temperature 8–12 hours until doubled and fragrant.
Watch outFerment the old-dough starter eight to twelve hours until it's doubled and smells sour-fragrant — that's the living culture the flavour rides on; flat and odourless means it's not ready.
- 240 min
Next morning, combine the fermented old dough with 300g flour, 130ml water, 5g salt, and 2g baking soda; knead vigorously 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic; rest covered 30 minutes.
- 310 min
Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces of about 100g each; roll each into a smooth ball, then press flat into a disc about 2cm thick.
- 410 min
Using a dough scraper or knife, make three cuts of equal spacing from near the center outward, stopping 2cm from the rim of each disc, creating six prongs; gently splay the prongs apart to open the claw shape.
- 510 min
Preheat a barrel flatbread oven (大饼炉) on high heat for the morning flatbread session; once flatbreads are done, reduce fire to glowing embers only; press each tiger claw firmly against the inner wall of the oven.
- 6330 min
Seal the oven mouth with a damp cloth or lid; slow-bake on residual heat 5–6 hours without opening; remove when the surface displays alternating golden and white patches and the crust sounds hollow when tapped.
Watch outSlow-bake on residual heat only, never opening the oven — done when the crust shows alternating golden and white patches and sounds hollow when tapped.
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