Chunbing (Thin Wheat Pancakes for Wrapping)

Variations

• Heyebing (荷葉餅): the same dough made smaller and a little thicker and folded over. This is usually what goes out with Peking duck.
• Steamed instead: stack them in a steamer for 10 minutes rather than using a pan. They come out softer and moister, but with no spotting and less aroma.
• Hecai (合菜): the collective name for the fillings — bean sprouts, garlic chives, egg and shredded pork as the base, and different in every household. It all has to be cooked dry; a wet filling tears the pancake.
• Not the same as a spring roll: a spring roll rolls this pancake up and fries it. The two split from the same family; one is eaten as it is and one is deep-fried.
• Making them ahead: peeled apart and stacked with paper between them they freeze well, and five minutes in a steamer brings them back.

Tips

• The boiling water is here for the opposite reason it is in songpyeon. That page explains that rice flour has no gluten, so cold water will not bring it together and gelatinised starch has to stand in for the network — boiling water replacing something absent. Chunbing's wheat flour has gluten. Here the boiling water denatures part of that protein to put something present out of action, which is why the finished pancake is not chewy and does not split when you fold it.
• The pairs are about thickness. Rolled singly, a sheet this thin tears as you lift it and dries out in the pan. Rolled as a pair it is double thickness while you work, and after cooking it separates into two sheets of half that — and the force of the pin is spread over two layers, so it does not hole.
• It is chapati's trick done by hand. Gözleme describes chapati as the bread whose "whole point is ballooning on the fire and pulling apart into two layers". There the two layers are a result, made by steam; here they are made with oil before the bread ever sees heat. Chapati has to puff to succeed; chunbing never needs to.
• Oil one face only. Oil both and the two discs slide against each other and go out of register under the pin. Oiled on one side and pressed dry face to dry face, the rims grip and the pair stays aligned.
• The oil has to reach the edge. Anywhere it is missing, the two doughs cook into each other, and that is where they tear when you separate them. Take the brush right out to the rim.
• Peel them while they are hot. As they cool the oil between the faces sets and the surfaces dry, and the pair becomes one sheet. Do it straight off the pan, through a cloth if it is too hot.
• No oil in the pan. This bread must not crisp; it has to fold. The moment the outside starts to fry it cracks along the fold. It is the case heat control leaves open for a dry pan, and the signal to read here is not a sound but the small bubbles lifting the surface.
• Cook the filling dry. The pancake is thin enough that liquid destroys it on contact. That is why the sprouts go over a hard flame for seconds and the cucumber goes in raw.