A cost-effective green synthesis method for nitrogen-doped porous carbon from Chinese steamed bread flour by successive hydrothermal treatment and pyrolysis is reported. The hydrothermal treatment remarkably enhances the strength of the resulting pyrolyzed carbon materials, enabling the facile fabrication of robust monolithic nitrogen-doped porous carbon with the yield of 44.33%. This nitrogendoped porous carbon exhibits 3-dimensional porous structure which is mainly mesoporous and high surface area. The thin and 3-dimensional self-supported working electrode is made from the synthesized nitrogen-doped porous carbon without using any other current collector or polymeric binder. The hydrogen evolution reaction electrocatalytic activity in 0.5MH(2)SO(4) reveals the achievement of the low overpotential of similar to 220 mV at 10 mA cm(-2), a Tafel slope of similar to 77 mV dec(-1), a nearly 100% Faradaic yield, an excellent stability, and a low charge transfer resistance. The self-supported electrode exhibits higher electrocatalytic activity than the powder-state supported on graphite felt electrode. Its hydrogen evolution reaction electrocatalytic activity is better than that of the reported non-metal heteroatom-doped carbon catalysts and comparable to that of some metal catalysts in acidic media. The use of flour enables the cheap and facile fabrication of carbon electrode with tunable pore sizes and surface areas, making flour-based carbon electrodes highly promising. (c) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.