Making Pão de Queijo

Pão de queijo (pãos de queijo?) are a lot like gougères, but with a little less fat and zero gluten. Why’s that? Because they’re made from tapioca starch, a derivative of the cassava root, not wheat flour. This gives them a somewhat different texture, like a soft wheat bun when cool, like a hot air ballon made of molten cheese when warm. They’re really quite a delicious experience either way, no wonder they’re one of the national foods of Brazil.

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Pão de Queijo Recipe

One of the more interesting quirks of the human brain (or at least MY human brain) is that once it starts down a path with the wrong set of assumptions it doesn’t return easily to the right track, even if that track is relatively easy to get onto. So it was with me and pão de queijo. Squaring the right technique (since there are at least three possibles) with the right cassava product (since there are at least three of those as well) took me the better part of a week. Thankfully with a little help from some of my readers, I finally arrived at the right recipe, cassava flour and technique. Whew! You’ll need:

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Where does pão de queijo come from?

An excellent question. I’ve received so much conflicting information on pão de queijo this week — from recipes to individual ingredients to history — I’m almost reluctant to post about it. But then a healthy dose of skepticism is required whenever you’re talking food history, since it’s often indistinguishable from myth.

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This is turning into one of those projects…

Three more failed attempts at this ultra-simple bread and I’m starting to wonder if pão de queijo is possible without specially-ordered ingredients from Brazil. So far neither American-made tapioca starch nor Mexican-made manioc flour have performed as predicted/expected. Between the two the tapioca starch seems the more promising, but so far it’s not working in […]

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Notice anything odd about that recipe?

For a cheese puff recipe it seems to be missing a couple of things. A leavener for starters. There’s no yeast and no baking powder. And then there’s the flour thing…there isn’t any. No wheat flour at any rate. Instead we have manioc flour, also known as the dried and ground starch of the cassava (also known as yuca) root. It’s the same starch that tapioca is made from, in case that helps.

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