Pão de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

Puffed, hollow, chewy cheese rolls made from tapioca starch scalded with hot milk and oil. The clearest demonstration of starch gelatinisation in the whole section.

Untested: not yet made in this kitchen. It is here as the showcase for one flour in the Flour section and is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

• 1 lb tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 cup full-fat milk
• ¼ cup vegetable oil, plus 1 tablespoon for oiling your hands
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 round (10 oz) queso fresco, crumbled

Directions

1. Prepare. Heat the oven to 350 °F. Whisk the tapioca and salt in a large bowl. Mix the cheeses and eggs in another.
2. Scald. Bring the milk and oil to a simmer and pour straight onto the tapioca, stirring. It will form a lumpy, gummy mass.
3. Cool 5–10 minutes, until it can be handled.
4. Mix. Work in the cheese-and-egg mixture with a spoon or your hands until it comes together in a ball. White specks are normal.
5. Shape 1–2-tablespoon balls with oiled hands and set them 2 inches apart on a baking sheet.
6. Bake 30–35 minutes, until golden.

Notes

Source Adapted from Aline Shaw, “Brazilian Cheese Bread (Pão de Queijo),” Brazilian Kitchen Abroad. The source does not give the Parmesan by weight.

Starch, not flour This uses only sweet tapioca starch (polvilho doce). The traditional Minas Gerais version often blends in polvilho azedo, a fermented sour starch that adds lift and tang; no measured recipe using it was found. Queso fresco and Parmesan stand in for Brazilian queijo Minas.

Why this flour Scalding gelatinises the starch into a stretchy paste; in the oven it puffs into a hollow, crisp-shelled, chewy ball with no gluten at all. Tapioca starch is not cassava flour (the whole root), which would not do this.

Freezing (from the source) Freeze the shaped balls on the sheet for 15 minutes, bag them, and bake from frozen for 40–45 minutes.

Gluten-free by ingredient: safe for coeliac disease only if every ingredient — flour, starch, baking powder — is labelled gluten-free. Naturally gluten-free flours are often contaminated with wheat in milling.

The Flour section of the Food site covers the history, the science, milling, label systems and every flour used here.