In a Chinese bakery these sell for a couple of yuan and cost the baker ten minutes of muscle memory. At home the same recipe gives you a squat, smooth bun with no visible layering, and the reason is almost never the ingredients. It is heat, resting time and how hard you pressed the rolling pin.
The pastry is built from two doughs. Water-oil dough (水油皮) is flexible and holds everything together; oil dough (油酥) is pure flour and fat, with no water and therefore no gluten. Stack them, roll, fold, roll again, and each fold multiplies the number of fat-separated sheets. Bake it and the water in the outer dough turns to steam, pushes the sheets apart, and sets them.
The single most useful rule: if you can see the oil dough through the water-oil dough at any point, the layers are already too thin to open. Stop rolling and rest for fifteen minutes before the next pass.
Vertical 3:4, natural window light, 1000 × 1500 px.
Ingredients, per 10 pastries
Weights per piece matter more than total weights here, because the ratio between the two doughs is what produces visible layers. Each pastry is roughly 20 g water-oil dough, 12 g oil dough, 20 g paste, 14 g yolk.
| Component | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour 中筋面粉 | 110 g | Water-oil dough. Bread flour makes it tough; pastry flour makes it tear. |
| Lard 猪油 | 38 g | Water-oil dough. Unsalted butter works at 42 g; the layers open slightly less. |
| Caster sugar 细砂糖 | 12 g | Water-oil dough. |
| Cold water 冷水 | 42 g | Water-oil dough. Add the last 5 g slowly. |
| Cake flour 低筋面粉 | 78 g | Oil dough. |
| Lard 猪油 | 42 g | Oil dough. Must be soft, not melted. |
| Red bean paste 红豆沙 | 200 g | 20 g per piece. Store-bought paste is usually wetter than it looks — see note below. |
| Salted duck egg yolks 咸蛋黄 | 10 | Frozen vacuum-packed yolks are the practical option outside China. |
| Baijiu or rice wine 白酒 | 1 tbsp | For deodorising the yolks. |
| Black sesame 黑芝麻 | to finish | Optional, but it is how the pastry is identified at a glance. |
Method
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Dry the yolks, don't cook them
Roll each yolk in baijiu, place on parchment, and bake at 180°C for five to six minutes — until the surface loses its sheen and darkens slightly. They should still be soft inside. Overbaking makes them chalky and they will not bind to the paste.
Shot 2 — yolks after baking, on parchment, side by side with raw ones.
Horizontal 4:3. -
Knead the water-oil dough until it fights back
Rub the flour, sugar and lard together until sandy, then add water and knead for eight to ten minutes. You are looking for a dough that springs back when poked and stretches without tearing — a rough windowpane is enough. Under-kneaded dough tears during the roll and the filling escapes.
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Rub, don't knead, the oil dough
Cake flour and soft lard, pressed together with your fingertips until it just holds as a paste. Kneading develops gluten, and gluten in the oil dough means it will split through the outer dough in the oven.
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Wrap, then roll twice — this is where layers are made
Divide both doughs into ten. Flatten a piece of water-oil dough, wrap the oil dough ball inside, seal. Roll into an oval about 12 cm long, roll it up like a scroll, rest seam-down for 15 minutes. Then roll the scroll out in the perpendicular direction and roll up again. Rest another 15 minutes.
Two rolls give you 3 × 3 = 9 visible sheet layers after baking; three rolls gives 27 but the sheets become too thin to survive, and the pastry turns short and crumbly instead of flaky.
Shot 3 — the second roll, mid-way, with the oil dough still visible as a distinct line. Horizontal 4:3. -
Shape with the edges thinner than the centre
Press each rested scroll flat into a disc. Roll the edges a little thinner than the middle, because the edges all gather at the seam and would otherwise form a thick, unleavened base — the dense patch at the bottom of so many home-made versions.
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Seal properly, or the yolk leaks
Flatten the red bean paste around a yolk into a 20 g shell, sit it in the disc, then bring the dough up and pinch the seam closed. Pinch twice, and place seam-down. A single pinch opens during baking as the steam expands.
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Brush thin, twice
Egg yolk beaten with a tablespoon of milk, brushed thinly, left two minutes, brushed again. A thick single coat browns before the layers have opened, and you end up with a dark shell over raw pastry.
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Bake at 180°C for 28–30 minutes
Middle rack, no fan if your oven allows it. The pastry is done when the layers have visibly separated into rings and the base is dry. If the tops brown before 20 minutes, the oven is running hot — drop to 170°C rather than shortening the time.
When the layers disappear: five causes
All five produce the same result — a smooth, slightly puffy shell — so diagnose in this order, cheapest first.
1. The oil dough was kneaded
Gluten in the oil dough makes it tear through the outer layer as it expands. Fix: rub it together with fingertips only, stop at "just holds".
2. No resting between rolls
The gluten needs time to relax or it snaps back and the sheets fuse. Fix: 15 minutes, covered, between every pass — not five.
3. Rolled too thin
If the oil dough shows through as a translucent patch, the layers are gone. Fix: roll to about 3 mm and accept a shorter oval.
4. The paste was too wet
Excess moisture steams through the seam and glues the layers shut. Fix: dry store-bought paste in a pan over low heat for a few minutes until it pulls away from the sides.
5. Oven too hot
The crust sets before the steam can push the sheets apart. Fix: 180°C and check at 20 minutes; a thermometer in the oven beats the dial.
Keeping them
Cool completely, then airtight at room temperature for two days. Beyond that, freeze baked and reheat at 160°C for eight minutes — the layers come back. Do not refrigerate: the paste pulls moisture into the shell and it goes soft within hours.
Buying the two hard ingredients
Frozen salted duck egg yolks are sold vacuum-packed in Chinese groceries and online; they thaw in about an hour and behave better than canned. Lard is in the refrigerated section of most Latin American and Eastern European groceries, and any butcher will sell you back fat to render — 15 minutes in a pan over low heat, strained, keeps a month in the fridge.