Gyeran-ppang계란빵

No clear record tells us when or where today's gyeran-ppang (계란빵), with a whole egg baked on top, first appeared. The name itself, though, is older than you might think. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, the hotteok shops opened by Chinese immigrants from around the 1880s sold a gyeran-ppang (鷄蛋餠) with egg white and red bean paste inside and egg yolk brushed on the outside. It was a different snack from today's in both shape and method.

Small breads baked by pouring batter into iron molds were long known as pulppang. The molds arrived from Japan in the 1930s, and after a 1954 Korea–U.S. agreement brought in cheap American surplus wheat, these breads took off as a new everyday snack in the 1960s. They were named after their molds, such as chrysanthemum bread, fish-shaped bungeo-ppang and walnut cakes. Egg bread, made by pouring batter into a mold and topping it with an egg, can be seen as one more snack that grew out of this street-bread culture.