Easy Pão de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

Pão de queijo is a super popular Brazilian cheese bread. Even if you don’t live in Brazil, there’s still a way you can make pão de queijo easily at home!

Hi friends! Welcome to another Mochi Mommy recipe. This post may look a little different from my usual Asian foods and desserts, and you may be wondering “Why is an Asian food blog posting a Brazilian recipe?”

Well, the short answer is that the recipe was in my old Japanese church cookbook! And it’s SO GOOD, I couldn’t not share (with a few of my personal tweaks).

The long answer is that I got this recipe from a Japanese Brazilian family who immigrated to the US and were a part of our church community. Did you know there’s a HUGE Japanese population in Brazil? These family friends had their own pão de queijo recipe and shared it with the other church members. Of course, they adjusted their recipe to use ingredients that were readily available in the US, so it’s not exaaaactly like what you would get in Brazil, but it’s basically as close as you can get if you live in North America. So big thank you to the Kumagai family for sharing your recipe with everyone!

What is Pão de Queijo?

Pão de queijo is a Brazilian cheese bread bun. It’s relatively small (think like a slightly larger, puffed up ping pong ball), with a crispy outside, chewy inside, and, of course, plenty of cheeeeese.

Pão de queijo is actually only one variation of this extremely popular South American cheese bread. It seems like every country in South America has their own version with their own name: cuñapes, pan de bono, pan de yuca, chipa…

I may have accidentally started a South American war on social media between people from different countries all claiming that their version was the original. Some people claimed that the recipes were slightly different from country to country, some people claimed that the recipes were the same but just called different names…

I decided I was not going to get involved in the comment war, since I have pretty little knowledge of the intricacies of South American cuisine. Also most of the comments were in Spanish.

Anyway, the point is, they definitely eat this cheese bread in Brazil, and I got this recipe from a Brazilian-American, so I’m going to just go with the Brazilian name for today.

Trader Joe’s Brazilian Cheese Bread vs. Homemade

Some of you may have noticed that Trader Joe’s sells a “Brazilian Style Cheese Bread” in their frozen section. I got SUPER excited when I saw this in our local store, so I bought it to try.

IT WAS NOT GOOD.

I don’t know why so many people online seem to love it. The inside was not nearly chewy enough. Making Brazilian cheese bread at home is actually fairly easy, so I would not repurchase the Trader Joe’s one again. The convenience does not make up for the poor texture.

What Flour to Use for Pão de Queijo?

In Brazil, you would most likely use a flour called polvilho, which is a gluten free flour made from the cassava root. Polvilho is not easily accessible in America, and if it is, it’s pretty expensive. Our Brazilian friend who moved to California used tapioca starch instead. Tapioca starch, which is the same as tapioca flour, is also made from the cassava root, but it is milled differently and not fermented. So while it’s not quite the same as polvilho, it’s a pretty dang good substitute for those of us NOT in South America. Plus, I literally bought my bag of tapioca starch for 99 cents at my local Asian market.

AND, tapioca starch is used in many other Asian recipes, so you’ll definitely find ways to use it up. You could try making your own boba from scratch! Or maybe try substituting it for mochiko in my milk mochi recipe!

What Cheese to Use for Pão de Queijo?

Like with the flour, the cheese we have access to in North America is just not going to taste exactly the same as the cheese you can get in Brazil. I like to use parmesan because it has some of that fermenty flavor that would normally be in the polvilho. I know some Brazilian-Americans also use mozzarella.

I’m not the cheese police, so just use whatever cheese/cheese blends you like!

Making Pão de Queijo With a Mixer

Some Brazilians online scolded me for using a stand mixer to beat my pão de queijo. Traditionally, you mix the dough just with a spoon in a mixing bowl and the arm strength of Michelle Obama. It’s a rite of passage! they said.

But scold me all you want! I have no arm muscles! My only workout is two ballet classes a week, and apparently even just holding my own arms at shoulder height in the air is not my specialty, given the number of times my teacher has to remind me to lift my elbows and use my back.

I may be cheating and forever excluding myself from acceptance in the Brazilian community, but I don’t care. You can pry my stand mixer out of my cold dead hands. You can use a stand mixer too, and I will not judge.

Making Pão de Queijo in a Muffin Tin vs. Sheet

Okay, this is where my recipe diverts slightly from the original I was using… Brazilian grandmas will probably be rolling in their graves. If you are a traditionalist, just skip this part of the recipe. I apologize. I know it hurts.

So, if you haven’t used tapioca flour before, you may be shocked by how it looks as you’re making this recipe. When you mix your batter, it will look very wet but also stringy. Honestly, to me it looks and feels REALLY similar to a loose salt water taffy. It’s very strange. Now, normally you would let your cheesy bread batter rest to let the tapioca flour hydrate more so it gets more like a dough that holds it shape and less like a…. stringy blob.

If you’re trying to prep your bread ahead of time, this is great. You can just stick the batter in the fridge and leave it for 20-30 minutes or up to overnight. When you take it out in the morning, you should be able to shape the dough into little balls and bake them on a flat baking sheet.

But if patience is NOT your virtue, as it is for me, here’s a little hack to be able to bake these babies right away: use a mini muffin tin. Using a cookie scoop, I spoon little balls of batter into a mini muffin tin. They will look like flat splats of batter, but then they will puff up into perfect balls in the oven!

Hopefully I did not offend the entire country of Brazil with these recipe adjustments. But I promise you, if one day you are desperate for cheese breads, and you will appreciate the miracle of this muffin tin hack.

More Savory Recipes

Looking for more savory Mochi Mommy recipes? Check these out!

• Char Siu Bao
• Quick Tofu Salad
• Grilled Mochi and Pork Belly Skewers
• Pico de Gallo Rice Bowl
• Asian Turkey Lettuce Wraps