Steamed bread refers to food fermented and steamed with flour and water. Although China planted wheat very early, it is known as one of the "five grains". There is a record that "My wheat has no food" in The Book of Songs ● Wei Mouse. But until the Han Dynasty, food made of wheat flour had not been fermented. All flaky or lumpy pasta were collectively called "cakes", baked as Luo cakes, sesame seeds as Hu cakes (because Hu cakes were introduced from the western regions after Zhang Qian went to the western regions), and cooked as soup cakes (not noodles, but noodle soup or noodle soup).

Steamed bread first appeared in the Wei and Jin Dynasties after the Eastern Han Dynasty, when it was called "steamed cake". Book of Jin, Volume 33, Biography of He Zengchuan, records that the life of big bureaucrats at that time was very luxurious, and the daily meal cost reached 10,000 yuan. There are "steamed cakes" (steamed bread) in the food: "(He Zeng) sexual luxury, business luxury. Curtain car clothes, poor and beautiful, kitchen dishes taste, too king. When every swallow sees it, he doesn't eat what is officially ordered. The emperor needs to take his food. Don't cross the steamed bread. It is best to eat a lot of money every day. "It's just that the steamed bread he eats has to be split into crosses, which is today's' flowering steamed bread' (my hometown is called' pomegranate bag').

Until the Song Dynasty, steamed bread was also called "steamed cake". Only in Song Renzong, because Injong's name is Zhao Zhen, and the sounds of "steamed" and "true" are close, in order to avoid taboo, Song people changed the name of "steamed cake" to "cooked cake". The "baked wheat cake" in Wu Dalang's "selling baked wheat cake every day" in Water Margin is "steamed cake", which is steamed bread.

As for today's steamed buns, they were called "steamed buns" in ancient times, which appeared almost at the same time as "steamed cakes". They were originally called "steamed buns" and later written as "steamed buns". Until the Northern Song Dynasty, people still called those with stuffing "steamed bread" and those without stuffing "steamed cake" or "baked cake". The "steamed buns" sold by Zhang Qing, the "Garden" in Mengzhou Cross Slope, and Sun Erniang, the "Bitch" in The Water Margin, are today's meat buns, but they are just a "human flesh bun" that sounds creepy.

Steamed bread was invented by Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms period. This statement was first seen in the novel Guan Ren quoted by Gao Cheng in Jiyuan in the Northern Song Dynasty, and was written by Luo Guanzhong in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But after all, it is only a legend, and it is a legend after seven or eight hundred years. Its credibility is self-evident.