🧧 happy lunar new year!!! 🧧
this past friday marked the beginning of the two week holiday period known as spring festival 春节, a huge celebration in mainland china to usher in the new year. festivities often include extravagant amounts of delicious food, a lot of quality family time, and even more echos of wishing each other health, happiness, and prosperity.
as a kid, my family used to gather with a few other chinese families in the greater twin cities area for a celebratory potluck dinner, where each family would bring their specialty dish, taking pride in their regional cuisine. raised in northern china where the food is more wheat based (rather than rice), my mom was known for her dumplings and flatbreads.
the apple don’t fall far from the tree i guess.
this recipe is a way to share a piece of my mother’s cooking and pride in our region. i adapted her yeasted scallion pancake 发面葱油饼 (fa mian cong you bing) recipe to use sourdough discard, and fell in love with the result. soft & fluffy on the inside with a perfectly umami laden & crispy exterior, this is a perfect way to get every last bit of leavening power from your sourdough starter discard.
notes
i went through a lot of trial and error with this recipe.
- some variations that were successful: i’ve used discard both at room temp and straight out of the fridge. the water temperature listed in the recipe below is for discard straight out of the fridge. for room temp you can use water 90-95°F.
- some that were less successful: this dough at a lower hydration doesn’t achieve the lightness we want, and the dough at a higher hydration becomes hard to roll out. i’d recommend sticking to 54-56%
- i didn’t test an overnight refrigerated proof at all, but that could be interesting to experiment with.
importantly, i use discard from a stiff levain. please tweak flour and water proportions to accommodate for your levain’s hydration. as an example calculation:
- my starter is 80% hydration with a 5:4:1 ratio of flour to water to starter. this means that 50g of starter is composed of about 28g flour and 22g water (or if you’re real nerdy like me, 50g = x + 0.8x, solve for x)
- if your starter is 100% hydration (1:1:1 ratio), that means that 50g of starter is composed of 25g of flour and 25g of water. so to match the recipe, add 3g more flour and 3g less water. ta-da!
i also wrote a blog post about this math with a few helpful calculator tools!
lastly, if you enjoyed this, i’d so appreciate you taking a second to rate and leave a comment all the way at the bottom. i love hearing feedback and it brings me so much joy to know you’re making this recipe!
baker’s percentage & basic timetable
the percentages for water and flour only account for the final dough build, and do not include the levain formula build.
| ingredient | baker’s percentage |
| all purpose flour | 100% |
| water | 54% |
| unfed levain (discard) | 30% |
| step | time |
| first rise | 1 hour |
| second rise | 1 hour |
| proof | 1 hour |
| final rise | 1.5-2 hours |
| fry | 12-14 min |
fluffy sourdough discard chinese scallion pancakes 发面葱油饼
formula
- 165 g all purpose flour
- 89 g water, 100°F
- 50 g sourdough starter discard
- 10 g oil (olive, vegetable, or canola)
- 3 g fine-grained salt
- 25 g scallions, chopped finely (2-3 stalks)
- 1 handful sesame seeds
method
- mix flour and water together until you see chunks and strands, but before it's come together completely. then, add the sourdough starter discard.
- mix together completely, kneading lightly until dough forms a ball shape. leave in bowl and keep covered for 1 hour.
- after an hour, knead lightly for 1 minute, until top appears smooth. Put back in bowl and cover again for 1 hour.
- take dough out of bowl and knead lightly again for 1 minute. drizzle a small amount of oil on top to prevent sticking.
- oil your working surface to ensure dough does not stick. using a rolling pin, roll out dough until about 1/2 in. thick. rest, covered, for 1 hour.
- the dough should look slightly puffier. roll out again, like you're making cinnamon rolls, into a rectangular shape until about 1/4 in. thick.
- drizzle oil evenly across rolled out dough. dab each corner towards the center and wiggle slightly to ensure that oil is evenly spread across dough. lightly sprinkle salt evenly across flat dough, and repeat with the scallions.
- take the shorter end of the rectangle, and begin rolling up the rectangle like a jelly roll (or a fruit rollup or cinnamon rolls!). roll this tightly to achieve more layers — i recommend going pretty slowly to ensure getting the middle and edges.
- once complete, shape the roll to form a coil. the end result should look like a circular snail's shell. tuck the end of the roll underneath the coil, and press firmly.
- oil your working surface again to ensure dough does not stick. using a rolling pin, roll the final circle out slightly to form a 7-8 in circle. cover, and let rest for 1.5-2 hours.
- the dough should look slightly domed when you uncover it. using a rolling pin, roll lightly until top is flat. you want to maintain the thickness, so careful not to compress. if desired, sprinkle an even layer of sesame seeds on both sides. using a light touch, roll over the sesame seed studded dough with your rolling pin to seal them in.
- now you're ready to fry! turn your stove to high heat. take a skillet pan and coat the bottom with oil, and wait until oil sizzles.
- when the oil sizzles, place the dough into the skillet pan. lower heat to medium-high and cook, covered, for 5 minutes. using a spatula, flip and cook other side for 5 minutes.
- fry until sides are golden brown and crispy, about 2 more minutes per side.
- when done, remove from skillet pan and let cool slightly before cutting in. serve warm along side vegetables, with a dipping sauce, or as a snack. enjoy the scallion pancake like you've never enjoyed the before.
thank you sharing this! it was exactly the motivation I needed for my starter discard. I made a bunch of edits to your recipe mainly due to the fact that I left my dough out for too long, but it was still devoured immediately. thank you!
yay, thank you so much for trying it out! brings me so much joy to hear.
After shaping the scallion pancake, I let it rest overnight in the fridge, and then fried them up the next morning. They were terrific. I really like that you provide a chart, which is so useful.
Ooo great hot tip re: resting overnight in fridge, thanks so much for trying that out and sharing with us, Jing! So happy to hear they turned out delicious 🙂
This came out great. I’m new to sourdough and I’m sure I did so many things wrong but the end result was still delicious and similar to what I am used to buying from stores. So this is a pretty forgiving recipe for someone new, thank you!
Wow, thank you so much making these and for the kind words!!
Made this a few times with the sourdough discard in the fridge. Used straight from the fridge. Maybe should bring to room temperature first or use a bit of instant yeast. I cheat on the resting and proofing times and cook in under 4 hours. May not be as soft but still good. Trying out today when finely chopped Bombay onions along with scallions.
I’ve been making this pancake many times over. The trick to get the pancakes really crispy is to use oil generously in the final stretch and proof and just before pan frying, like making roti canai or roti prata.
So excited to make this today! Is there a dipping sauce you might recommend to go with it? Thanks in advance
Hi Lisa, so exciting! I don’t have a great recommendation unfortunately. I usually eat these by themselves, or to accompany a main dish, much like how in restaurants you get “a side of bread.” If you have a dipping sauce you end up enjoying, would love to try it though!
I finally got around to making this because my scallions needed to be harvested and my sourdough discard collection was overtaking my kitchen. I’m so glad you provided this recipe so that people aren’t stuck with boring sourdough discard recipes. It came out absolutely fabulous and will recommend your recipe to anyone!
This was so so good!! I’ve been that interested in maintaining my own sourdough starter but 大餅 was what inspired me to try. And this recipe was perfect!! I made one for my parents too, and they said it was better than the restaurants. Thank you so much for also including the exact ratios!
Happy Chinese New Year! I made this with my husband on the first day of lunar new year and it was as good as those we’ve had in Shanghai nese restaurants. It was fun too to share the recipe and photos with my mom, another type of bonding in this time when we can’t visit our elderly parents. I’ve been following your blog since early last year and was worried when you didn’t post for a bit. Thanks for sharing joy, sorrows, musings, recipes with your readers. 祝您 身体健康 阖家幸福 万事如意
Aww, wow thank you for the super kind words and thoughts — I really appreciate these well wishes! I’m glad to be back too 🙂
I started off with making the original recipe–the discard was a-rising, the sesame seeds a-sizzlin, all was well. Next thing I know, I’m dropping in cinnamon and sugar, Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and even CHEESE (this is now a glorified pizza and I won’t take any other answer). Anyway, my point is that this recipe is delicious and extremely flexible and, should you so desire, can be made into dessert.
Holy rising sourdough, your creativity is inspiring! Thank you so much for sharing these words — you are amazing.
I think I’ve seen a Chinese Islamic bread that looks almost the same called Zhima dabing. They were sold at this dumpling shop in Manhattan made into sandwiches that were like a hybrid of Peking duck (hoisin and duck) and banh mi(pickled radish and carrots) that I kept going back to because it was so delicious. Later there was a famous Chinese restaurant in SF that sold “sourdough scallion pancakes” which I was confused by because I only knew of CYB as unleavened but when I learned how Zhima dabing was made with yeast, I thought, oh, that’s like cong you bring but you could make that as sourdough, which is what I was looking to see if anyone had done and found this site. Saves me a bunch of work to figure out. Thanks!
Is the yeasted scallion pancake name you used here a common alternative name to Zhima dabing or just one you used in your household? Or is it actually a slightly different bread and I haven’t figured out the difference?
Great recipe! I did overnight refrigerated proof and it came out fluffy!