Pão de queijo (, "cheese bread" in Portuguese) or Brazilian cheese bread is a small, baked cheese roll or

cheese bun Cheese buns or cheese breads may refer to a variety of small, baked, cheese-flavored rolls, a popular snack and breakfast food in Brazil. Cheese buns may be made with cassava and or corn starch, and cheese. In countries where the snack is popula ...

, a popular snack and breakfast food in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It is a traditional Brazilian recipe, originating in the state of

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

. Pão de queijo originated in Brazil. Enslaved people would soak and peel the

cassava ''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively ...

root and make bread rolls from it. At this time, there was no cheese in the rolls. At the end of the 19th century, more ingredients became available to the colonial community such as milk and cheese. They added milk and cheese to the tapioca roll making what we now know as pão de queijo. It is inexpensive, often sold from streetside stands by vendors carrying a heat-preserving container. In Brazil, it is also very commonly found in groceries, supermarkets and bakeries, industrialized or freshly made. It is also widely eaten in northern Argentina. Despite being referred to as "bread", the cheese bread is basically a type of starch tart cookie or sweet plus eggs, salt, vegetable oil, and cheese, with soft and elastic consistency and with a few variations.

History

With the discovery of mines near

Ouro Preto Ouro Preto (, ''Black Gold''), formerly Vila Rica (, ''Rich Village''), is a city in and former capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a former colonial mining town located in the Serra do Espinhaço mountains and designated a World Herita ...

in around 1700, some 20% of the Brazilian population at that time, mainly slaves, occupied a vast territory in southeast Brazil. Since wheat was not available, local cooks created a kind of bread from starch derived from the cassava tuber shown to them by Tupiniquins indigenous groups. In the late 19th century, grated hard cheese was added.

Main ingredients

There are several different recipes o
Brazilian cheese bread
where the ingredients and the type of cheese vary widely – as well as the final result. Some of them use sweet starch, other sour, or even both. But what gives it its main feature is that it is based on

starch and some kind of cheese. The fat –

lard Lard is a semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig.Lard
entry in the o ...

vegetable oil Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of fruits. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, or fat ...

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 ...

margarine Margarine (, also , ) is a spread used for flavoring, baking, and cooking. It is most often used as a substitute for butter. Although originally made from animal fats, most margarine consumed today is made from vegetable oil. The spread was orig ...

– acts as a molecular lubricant, contributing to the elastic texture of the dough. The

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

gives colour and flavour to the recipe. The type of cheese varies according to preference or availability. The most used are

mozzarella Mozzarella (, ; nap, muzzarella ) is a southern Italian cheese traditionally made from Italian buffalo's milk by the pasta filata method. Fresh mozzarella is generally white but when seasoned it turns to a light yellow depending on the anim ...

parmesan Parmesan ( it, Parmigiano Reggiano; ) is an Italian hard, granular cheese produced from cows’ milk and aged at least 12 months. It is named after two of the areas which produce it, the provinces of Parma and Reggio Emilia (''Parmigiano'' is ...

, and (more traditionally)

Minas cheese Minas cheese ( or pt, queijo-de-minas, , literally "cheese from Minas") is a type of cheese that has been traditionally produced in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. It comes in three varieties, named (fresh), (half-aged) and (aged). A ...

(either in its "ripened" or "standard" version). The cheese gives the typical flavor of the cheese bread, hence its name. There is also the boiled cheese bread with a preparation technique that requires boiling water while preparing, sometimes mixed with vegetable oil in flour. The boiled cheese bread has the closest taste of natural, as in the boiling process the

dough Dough is a thick, malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops. Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavening ag ...

is pre-cooked. Some recipes use

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

.Marco Clivati (1 June 2013). Delícias para sua Festa Vegetariana Editora Europa .l.pp. 35–. .

Preparation

Pães de queijo are formed into small balls, around 3–5 centimeters in diameter (though they may be larger) and about 50 calories in each roll. The cassava flour is a powerful starch which is key to the texture of the pão de queijo; unlike other types of bread, pão de queijo is not

leavened 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 ...

. Small pockets of air within the dough expand during baking and are contained by the

elasticity Elasticity often refers to: *Elasticity (physics), continuum mechanics of bodies that deform reversibly under stress Elasticity may also refer to: Information technology * Elasticity (data store), the flexibility of the data model and the cl ...

of the starch paste. Because it is made of cassava flour (as opposed to wheat flour), pão de queijo contains no gluten. Varieties of stuffed pães de queijo with

catupiry Catupiry () is one of the most popular brands of cheese in Brazil. It was developed by Italian immigrant Mario Silvestrini in the state of Minas Gerais in 1911. The name derives from the Tupi word meaning "excellent". Catupiry is a soft, mild ...

, hot and melted

goiabada Goiabada (; from ''goiaba'', guava] is a Jam, conserve made of red guavas and sugar, commonly found throughout the Portuguese-speaking countries of the world. It dates back to the colonial times of Brazil, where guavas were used as a substitute ...

doce de leite Doce was a Portugal, Portuguese female band from the 1980s. It was one of the first girl bands in Europe. The girls took part in the Portuguese national final in order to represent the country in the Eurovision Song Contest 1980 with the song " ...

and other variations can be found in Brazil.

Availability

Brazil

Casa do Pão de Queijo - São José dos Pinhais

In Brazil, ''pão de queijo'' is a popular breakfast dish and snack. It continues to be widely sold at

snack bar A snack bar usually refers to an inexpensive food counter that is part of a permanent structure where snack foods and light meals are sold. Description A beach snack bar is often a small building situated high on the sand. Besides soft dri ...

s and bakeries and it can also be bought frozen to bake at home. In Brazil, cheese puff mix packages are easily found in most supermarkets.

United States

Given its growing popularity in the US, the frozen packages of ''pao de queijo'' can now be found in some American grocery stores such as Costco, Sam's Club, Ralph's, County Market, HEB, Publix, World Market, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's.

Japan / East Asia

Pão de queijo arrived in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

with the

dekasegi Dekasegi ( pt, decassegui, decasségui, , ) is a term that is used in Brazil to refer to people, primarily Japanese Brazilians, who have migrated to Japan, having taken advantage of Japanese citizenship or '' nisei visa'' and immigration laws to w ...

. It is usually made with rice flour instead of the cassava (tapioca) starch.

Australia

Pão de queijo is available in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

in specialty international food stores and some major supermarkets, including

Woolworths Supermarkets Woolworths Supermarkets (colloquially known in Australia as "Woolies") is an Australian chain of supermarkets and grocery stores owned by Woolworths Group. Founded in 1924, Woolworths today is Australia's biggest supermarket chain with a mar ...

as of early 2021, where it is marketed as a "naturally gluten-free" snack.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pao de queijo Brazilian cuisine Buns Cheese dishes Portuguese words and phrases Cassava dishes Culture in Minas Gerais