Roujiamo (肉夹馍) is considered the Chinese equivalent to the Western hamburger and meat sandwiches, it is a street food originating from Shaanxi Province in China. It is also made famous by Xi'an Famous in New York City a couple of years back.
The flatbread used for this sandwich is called "Bai Ji Mo” (白吉馍), which is made from wheat flour first toasted on flat pan and then baked in a clay or mud oven. A good Bai Ji Mo is said to be crusty on the outside and soft in the inside. The stewed meat is most commonly pork, stewed for hours in Master Stock, it is later chopped and stuffed into the flatbread, served with a little gravy from the stew (腊汁), thus this Chinese Stewed Pork Burger is also called “腊汁肉夹馍” which means Chinese Stewed Pork Burger with gravy.
Ingredients for Baijimo (Flat bread):
3 cups/360 g All purpose flour + 2-3 tbsp/25-30g of all purpose flour
1 cup/ 225 g Water (Room Temperature)
1 tsp/3 g of Active dried yeast
1. Place 3 cups of all purpose flour, yeast and water in a large mixing bowl, mix and knead together to form a stiff dough. Cover the dough and let it rest for 15 minutes. When the dough raises about 30% larger in size and the dough is softer to touch, it is time to start working on the dough.
2. Sprinkle about some all purpose flour on working surface, take the dough out and slowly knead the flour in, adding 2-3 tbsp of flour slowly to knead the dough until it form a stiff and smooth dough again, let the dough rest for 5 minutes.
3. Divide the dough to 8 equal portions, take one portion and shape it into a long log. Apply gentle pressure to taper the dough on the outer edges, by doing this, your log should end up slightly thicker in the middle and thinner on the ends.
4. Use a rolling pin to roll the log into an oblong shape, roll it up from the bottom to form a small cylinder, turn over and flattened the dough to form a 1 cm thick flat dough, repeat the steps for the remaining dough.
5. Shape the flat doughs into bowl shape, preheat oven to 400 F(200 C), heat up a cooking pan, preferably cast iron pan. Place the bowl shape dough facing up, cook at medium heat for 2 minutes, turn the bowls and flatten the dough using a spatula or your palm if you can bear the heat. Continue cooking for 2-3 minutes, your bread should now have beautiful circular grill marks on it.
6. Transfer the bread to a baking sheet, bake them in the oven for 8-10 minutes until slightly puffed and crusty on the surface.
7. Once the bread is cooled enough to work on, slit the bread from the middle but do not completely cut it through, stuff the bread with minced stewed pork and serve warm.