While it’s hard not to love the fresh slices of beef and robust salad bar at a churrasco or Brazilian barbecue restaurant, the real star of the show is the pão de queijo. These cheesy Brazilian breads, which are typically served as an appetizer, arrive piping hot with a crisp exterior and chewy, mochi-like interior. I can (and have) easily put away at least five of them before eating anything else. At all-you-can-eat spots like Fogo de Chão, this may not be the most cost-effective approach, but if you’ve also tried these breads, then you know how hard it is to stop yourself from just one more bite.
So when I saw that Bob’s Red Mill has a recipe for pão de queijo on the back of its tapioca flour bag, I knew I needed to attempt to bring these cheesy breads to my own kitchen.
The recipe is extremely simple and relies mostly on pantry staples; the only thing you may have to buy is the bag of tapioca flour itself. Otherwise, all you need are shredded cheese, salt, a single egg, milk, and olive oil, all of which I already had in my own pantry.
The instructions tell you to throw everything into a blender and let it rip before pouring out the batter into greased muffin tins. Since I don’t have a blender I whisked everything together in a mixing bowl. This takes slightly longer, and requires a bit of elbow grease to fully incorporate the tapioca flour with the liquid ingredients, but I’d say it was no more than two minutes of stirring. The wonderful thing about working with tapioca flour is that it’s gluten-free, so there’s no need to worry about overmixing here.
The batter looked questionably watery by the time everything came together, but I trusted the process, and used a cookie scoop to portion the batter into each muffin tin. (If you mix it in a blender, you can just pour it.) As the batter was quite wet, it was a bit of a balancing act, but I managed to fill each tin save forone. The recipe states you’ll get 12 rolls, but I wound up with 11.
Once the tins are filled, the buns need a mere 20 minutes in a 400-degree oven, so the recipe took me only roughly 30 minutes from start to finish. I cleaned up the kitchen and washed all the dishes while the rolls baked; by the time I was done, they were, too.
The pão de queijos came out hot and crispy, and very fragrant with the smell of melted cheddar and olive oil. Despite an extremely wet batter, they puffed up into near-perfect spheres in between the size of a golf ball and baseball. Steam escaped as I pulled them apart, revealing a stretchy interior filled with pockets of cheese. Within 10 minutes of taking them out of the oven, I had eaten four.
I don’t think this recipe is perfect, but it’s close, and as a base for pão de queijo, it is foolproof. To improve the recipe next time, I’d increase the salt from a half to a full teaspoon, as the bread tasted a little undersalted to me.
I also think it would be fun to switch up the cheeses or do a combination. There’s no way that a cheddar and parmesan blend would be bad, or pepper jack paired with some chopped, pickled jalapeños. I’m curious if add-ins would affect the bread’s rise, but even simple additions like garlic powder or smoked paprika could add dimension without weighing down the batter.
Quibbles aside, I truly believe anyone can make this recipe at home with great success, even those who are intimidated by baking. The pão de queijo would make impressive appetizers at a dinner party, an ideal addition to a potluck, or a perfect side to chili or tomato soup. And if you don’t eat them all in one sitting like I certainly will, they also freeze and reheat perfectly.
Additional photo illustration credits: cheese bread photo by Kat Thompson
