Bing (bread)

Bing
Type Flatbread or pancake
Place of origin China
Cookbook:Bing  Bing
Bing (bread)
Traditional Chinese 餅
Simplified Chinese 饼
Literal meaning biscuit
Flat pancakes
Traditional Chinese 薄餅
Simplified Chinese 薄饼
Literal meaning thin biscuit

Bing is a wheat flour-based Chinese food with a flattened or disk-like shape, similar to the French concept of a galette. These foods may resemble the flatbreads, pancakes, unleavened dough foods of non-Chinese and western cuisines. Many of them are similar to the Indian roti, French crepes, or Mexican tortilla, while others are more similar to Western cakes and cookies.

The term is Chinese, but may also refer to flatbreads or cakes of other cultures. The crêpe and the pizza, for instance, are referred to as keli bing (可麗餅) and bisa bing (比薩餅) respectively, based on the sound of their Western names, and the flour tortilla is known as Mexican thin bing (墨西哥薄餅) based on its country of origin.

Types

Bing are usually a casual food and generally eaten for lunch, but they can also be incorporated into formal meals. Both Peking duck and moo shu pork are rolled up in thin wheat flour bao bing with scallions and sweet bean sauce or hoisin sauce. Bing may also have a filling such as ground meat. Bing are commonly cooked on a skillet or griddle although some are baked.

Some common types include:

The Yuèbǐng (月餅; mooncakes), whilst sharing the name bing, is really a baked sweet pastry usually produced and eaten at the mid-autumn festival. Some other dessert bings are "Wife" cake (老婆饼), which contains winter melon, and the sweetened version of 1000 layer cake (千层饼) which contains tianmianjiang, sugar, and five spice or cinnamon.

Bings are also eaten in Korean culture, the most common being Jeon (hangul:전, hanja:煎 zh:jian (jianbing)) which often contain seafood.

See also

References