The fascinating cheesy bread with a poisonous sting in its tale
Plate up
You have to love a dish with a name that just tells you what it is: pao de queijo, or cheese bread. No room for misinterpretation there. However, the further you dive into this ubiquitous Brazilian snack, the more interesting it becomes. Because, yes, it is bread with cheese, but that bread isn't made from wheat flour, as you might expect. It's made from two types of cassava flour, one sweet, one sour. The sweet flour is a standard flour, similar in texture to cornflour, while the sour one is fermented, and thus has a stronger, sharper flavour. These two flours are blended with oil, eggs, milk and salt, plus cheese – maybe mozzarella, or local minas or canastra cheese – to form a dough, which is then shaped into balls and baked. The result is a light, puffy bread that pairs perfectly with morning coffee, and marks the beginning of the day for many Brazilians.
First serve
As with so many classic Brazilian dishes, pao de queijo's history speaks of the country's many influences over the centuries, from indigenous cultures to African slaves to European colonists. The genesis of this cheese bread can be found in the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais, where the Guarani people had been using cassava flour long before colonists arrived in the 1500s. When those settlers did arrive, they brought slaves with them, who began using cheap cassava flour to make small bread rolls. By the late 1800s, slavery had been abolished, cheese and eggs were added to the rolls, and the popularity of pao de queijo spread.
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In Belo Horizonte, in the heart of Minas-Gerais, feast on pao de queijo at the ever-popular A Pao de Queijaria (apaodequeijaria.com.br).
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