If you are a regular reader of this blog, you would be aware of my new strategy of emptying out my pantry before I buy anything new. My recipes are also mostly those which help me in this regard. I have a list of about 58 recipes which make use of various stuff in my pantry. I am checking them one by one. It also sometimes happen that for certain events, I have no choice but to buy new ingredients. Like for example – I had to buy Sweet rice flour and Tapioca Starch for making these gluten free Graham Crackers. So one of the recipes for making use of Tapioca starch which I had made note of were these yummy looking Pao De Queijo which are classic Brazilian cheese rolls.

Because of this New Year resolution of reducing the ingredient explosion in my freezer + Pantry, I am not cooking specifically for events now. But if it meets/matches one which helps me in this regard then its all OK! And that’s precisely what happened with this cheese bread. When Canela y Comino announced this months Bread Baking Event theme to be Latin Breads I was relieved:) Participating in BBD is like a must for me since I love breads but for some reason or the other I have been absent for last few themes. But not this time

Pao de Queijo is Brazilian cheese bread made of flour – sour or sweet plus eggs, salt, milk, lard, pork, oil and vegetable cheese from cow’s milk. The eggs is for the color and richness, the fat (here I use Butter and vegetable oil instead of lard) is for texture and Cheese is for…Oh well..Do you need reasons to add cheese to anything?? The flour  used is Tapioca which is similar in texture to that of Cornstarch. I used this recipe from southamericanfood.about.com where the measurements were way off! Only in the middle of making this recipe did I realize that something was terribly wrong. Coming back to verify if I copied down wrong instruction I came upon this review where it described the same issue I had. The consistency turned out to be like a broth than that of dough! Makes me wonder if its cos of the quality of Tapioca flour since few others did not seem to have problems. Anyway, I added few more cups of flour and it came out perfect. I have the corrected measurement – but you try it with discretion just in case the fault lies in the quality of Tapioca flour.

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix milk, salt, vegetable oil and butter in a pot, and bring to a boil.

As soon as it boils, remove from heat. Stir tapioca flour into the milk and butter mixture.

Stir in the eggs and the cheese, and mix well.

Let mixture cool for 15-30 minutes, so that it will be easier to handle.The recipe mentions refrigeration for 15 minutes. But if you see the picture below with the measurement they provided it was more of a bread broth

and when I added extra flour it became like this. Much better. The measurement I have provided makes it easy to roll into balls.But then as I mentioned previously add it with discretion.

Its still sticky but flouring your hands make it easier.

With floured (tapioca flour) hands, shape the dough into small balls.

and place them on a baking sheet.

Lets zoom out the camera now shall we? A reader of mine sent me a mail asking me if  my claim ‘about my kitchen being small’, was true then how come I manage to keep it so neat during cooking!  HaHaHa! Its a good thing I did not tell my house mate about this – he will laugh his hearts out – for at least 15 minutes Further he will get more fodder to tease me and say ‘You have been misleading your readers!’. Well see how the place, where I was shaping the rolls, looks? I usually tend to hide it with a good intention – I don’t want to distract your attention from the food (see what a good soul I am? ) . And also did you notice another important thing here? I finished the Tapioca Flour! Another ingredient done with!

Bake rolls for 20 to 25 minutes, until they are puffed up and are golden. They will rise slowly and puff up mostly in the last 5 or 10 minutes. You know they are done when there is amazing aroma wafting (tapioc’ish (#!#$?) smell?), the bread puffs up with lots of cracks (looks like some dinosaur egg hatching!) and it gets this v. slight yellowish glow with flecks of yellow here and there (cheese flecks?)

Serve warm.

Did you like this post? Share it

Subscribed to Chefinyou yet?

Follow on Twitter
Follow on Facebook

Subscribe Via RSS