Thursday, September 1, 2016

Pão de Queijo

I've been making these for years, using the same grossly inaccurate recipe and making the adjustments in my head. It occurs to me a shareable version might be a nice thing to have! So here's my comprehensive Brazilian cheese roll recipe, with commentary.

Ingredients:

2 cups milk*
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup vegetable oil
12 oz Bob's Red Mill tapioca flour**
4 eggs
2 cups grated cheese, the cheaper and oilier the better. Store-brand cheddar is great.
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (optional but recommended)
salt to taste

Variations:

rosemary, thyme, or other savory seasonings to taste
sugar, cinnamon, etc to taste
Fillings - I'm working on a proper filled roll strategy, but squashing them and putting filling in the middle, thumbprint-cookie-style, works just fine. You can use savory (more cheese, sausage, etc) or sweet fillings (marscapone, fruit/pie filling, etc)


* Original recipe calls for whole milk, but if you're using cheap oily cheese as I suggest, 2% will work just fine.
** This used to be just one package - they've switched to a 16-oz package and I need to redo the measurements for simplicity's sake. At least the new package is reclosable! This stuff aerosolizes if you let it move around when it's dry. Also, different brands have different grinds which leads to variations in texture. Feel free to experiment, but different proportions may be required.

Instructions:


1. Melt butter in large pot

2. Add milk, vegetable oil, and salt, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, remove from heat.

3. In small stages, stir in tapioca flour. It tends to lump, so the more gradually and thoroughly you can fold it in, the better.

4. Add eggs when the tapioca overwhelms the moisture. Continue adding tapioca.

5. Knead in cheese when tapioca is all in. The dough will be thick and sticky, but not liquid. Keep kneading until it's smooth and uniform. (If it's too wet, add more tapioca. If it's too dry, add more milk. This is the hard part, as it will vary batch to batch depending on humidity, phase of the moon, 24/7 news cycle, etc.)

6. The dough will still be hot enough to melt the cheese at this point. For ease of handling, stick it in the fridge for half an hour or so.

7. If finishing rolls today***, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

8. Oil your hands. No, more oil. The original recipe calls for flouring them, and I have never in my life seen so vile a falsehood.

9. Roll the dough into golf-ball-esque portions, re-oiling your hands every few balls. If necessary, wash the sticky dough off first and then re-oil. (Yes, this part is annoying.)

10. Arrange them on parchment paper on a baking sheet, or see *** below if you're freezing them for later. (Recipe makes about 2.5 baking sheets' worth of rolls.)

11. Bake at 325 for approximately 35-40 minutes. Keep an eye on them for the last ten minutes - they should be just brown with a firm crust and a gooey (but not raw-tasting) inside. Go ahead, taste one, the recipe makes plenty.

12. Eat until you feel ill. Then share.


*** This dough freezes beautifully. If you're saving some for later, make the individual dough balls, stick them on parchment paper in the freezer for an hour or two, then peel them into a ziploc once they're hard. Give them an extra five or ten minutes in the oven when cooking frozen dough.

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