Brazilian cuisine

Pão de queijo

Name: Pão de queijo
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Brazilian cuisine
Ingredients: 500 g Tapioca starch; 250 ml Milk; 100 ml Water; 120 ml Neutral oil; 2 Eggs; 200 g Parmesan; 100 g Mozzarella; 1 tsp Salt

Cheese balls of tapioca starch — a crust outside, a stretchy hollow inside. No wheat and no yeast.

Prep: 25 min
Cook: 25 min
Total: 50 min
Difficulty: Medium

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Tapioca starch500 g
Milk250 ml
Water100 ml
Neutral oil120 ml
Eggs2
Parmesan — grated200 g
Mozzarella — grated100 g
Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Bring the milk, water, oil and salt to just below boiling.
5 min
2
Pour all the hot liquid into the starch at once and stir with a spatula. The mixture looks lumpy and odd; that is correct. Let it cool to warm.
15 min
3
Work in the eggs one at a time, then both cheeses. Knead to an even sticky mass — hands are easier than a spoon.
8 min
4
With wet hands roll walnut-sized balls and space them three centimetres apart on a tray.
10 min
5
Bake at 200 °C for twenty minutes until golden. Do not open the door for the first fifteen: the steam escapes and they collapse.
20 min

About the dish

Pão de queijo rises on neither yeast nor baking powder but on steam. Tapioca starch scalded with hot liquid forms an elastic web, and the water trapped inside pushes it open in the oven.

The scalding is the decisive step. The milk and butter go to just below boiling and are poured into the starch all at once: adding them gradually will not build the same structure.

The cheese should be salty and dry — in Brazil that is queijo minas; elsewhere parmesan with a little mozzarella for stretch comes closest.

Worth knowing

— Shaped balls freeze well and bake straight from frozen, five minutes longer.
— Tapioca starch is not interchangeable with cornflour. They are different starches and behave differently when scalded.
— Eat them hot. Once cooled they turn dense; reheat in an oven rather than a microwave.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 380 kcal
Protein: 12 g
Fat: 20 g
Carbs: 40 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter