Portuguese sweet bread (

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

: ''pão doce'' "sweet bread" or ''massa sovada'' "kneaded dough") is a

bread Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...

made with

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. Immune factors and immune ...

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...

, eggs, yeast, flour and sometimes

lemon The lemon (''Citrus limon'') is a species of small evergreen trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae, native to Asia, primarily Northeast India (Assam), Northern Myanmar or China. The tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit is used for culin ...

peel to produce a subtly

sweet Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones ...

lightly textured

loaf A loaf ( : loaves) is a (usually) rounded or oblong mass of food, typically and originally of bread. It is common to bake bread in a rectangular bread pan, also called a loaf pan, because some kinds of bread dough tend to collapse and spread ...

rolls Roll or Rolls may refer to: Movement about the longitudinal axis * Roll angle (or roll rotation), one of the 3 angular degrees of freedom of any stiff body (for example a vehicle), describing motion about the longitudinal axis ** Roll (aviation), ...

. A slightly different recipe is made during

Easter Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...

that is known as '' folar'' and often contains a

hard-boiled egg Boiled eggs are eggs, typically from a chicken, cooked with their shells unbroken, usually by immersion in boiling water. Hard-boiled eggs are cooked so that the egg white and egg yolk both solidify, while soft-boiled eggs may leave the yolk, a ...

. The bread was brought to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

by Portuguese immigrants from Madeira and the Azores. Under the name Hawaiian rolls, Portuguese sweet bread is now considered a quintessential dish in

Hawaiian cuisine The cuisine of Hawaii incorporates five distinct styles of food, reflecting the diverse food history of settlement and immigration in the Hawaiian Islands. In the pre-contact period of Ancient Hawaii (300 AD-1778), Polynesian navigation, Polyn ...

and is widely consumed throughout the United States. Portuguese sweet bread is traditionally made in Madeira and the Azores around

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

, and the Easter version is made around Easter, but it is also available year-round on the islands. It is uncommon to find this type of bread in mainland Portugal. It is traditionally baked in a

stone oven A masonry oven, colloquially known as a brick oven or stone oven, is an oven consisting of a baking chamber made of fireproof brick, concrete, stone, clay (clay oven), or cob (cob oven). Though traditionally wood-fired, coal-fired ovens were c ...

known as a ''forno''. The bread is usually served simply with

butter Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment ...

and is sometimes served with a

rice pudding Rice pudding is a dish made from rice mixed with water or milk and other ingredients such as cinnamon, vanilla and raisins. Variants are used for either desserts or dinners. When used as a dessert, it is commonly combined with a sweetener such ...

known as ''arroz doce''. Portuguese sweet bread is common in areas with large populations of

Portuguese Americans Portuguese Americans ( pt, português-americanos), also known as Luso-Americans (''luso-americanos''), are citizens and residents of the United States who are connected to the country of Portugal by birth, ancestry, or citizenship. Americans and ...

and

Portuguese Canadians Portuguese Canadians ( pt, luso-canadianos, italic=no) are Canadian citizens of full or partial Portuguese heritage or people who migrated from Portugal and reside in Canada. According to the 2016 Census, there were 482,610 or 1.4% of Canadians ...

, such as

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

, northern

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, southern

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, and

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

especially

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, and it is prominent in Hawaiian and

New England cuisine New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to traditional English cuisine and Native American cuisine of the Abenaki, Narragansett, Niantic, Wabanaki, Wampan ...

s. At one time, Hawaii featured numerous ''fornos'' for baking Portuguese breads constructed by Portuguese immigrants. Like most baked goods, Portuguese sweet bread in its traditional form goes stale very quickly. In Hawaii, it was frequently called "stone bread" because of its habit of turning hard as a rock within one day of baking.

Robert Taira Robert Taira (November 5, 1923 in Hilo, Hawaii – May 29, 2003 in Torrance, California) was the founder of King's Hawaiian bakery. Taira was born and raised in Hilo, the ninth of eleven children of Ryukyuan people, Okinawan immigrants. He serv ...

King's Hawaiian King's Hawaiian is a Los Angeles-based family-owned and operated bakery, known chiefly for its Hawaiian bread. It was founded by Robert Taira in Hilo, Hawaii, in 1950. History Robert Taira founded the company, then called Robert's Bakery, in ...

was the first bakery to turn "Hawaiian bread" into a mass-produced

shelf-stable Shelf-stable food (sometimes ambient food) is food of a type that can be safely stored at room temperature in a sealed container. This includes foods that would normally be stored refrigerated but which have been processed so that they can be s ...

consumer product, after Taira cleverly tweaked the recipe to extend its shelf life while maintaining flavor and texture.

References

* Sweet breads Hawaiian desserts New England cuisine Portuguese cuisine Easter bread Christmas food {{portugal-cuisine-stub

See also

References