No-Knead Pão de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread)

Pão de queijo isn’t bread but it takes more kneading than bread, unless you do it the easy way with a thin batter made with a blender, immersion blender, or a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. This recipe is modified from Simply Recipes' Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread, which is not the only one out there but included weights and a long discussion about oil quantities and the emergency use of regular muffin tins. Another no-knead dimension of this recipe (besides not kneading it) is that you can, allegedly, stick the batter in the fridge and keep making pães for a week.

For an explanation of tapioca starch/flour, see the hard recipe.

Apparently if you’re truly unlucky you can make a non-Newtonian fluid out of tapioca starch and damage your blender. To avoid this rare occurrence, be sure to follow the instructions and mix all wet ingredients first, then add the dry ingredients gradually.

Makes 15–20, best eaten hot out of the oven.

Ingredients

• 1 room temperature egg
• ⅔ c. milk, also at room temperature
• ¼ c. olive oil
• 75 g. (2 ½ oz.) grated (or soft) cheese, preferably something a bit salty like parmesan, asiago, or feta
• 100 g. (or 1 c.) sour tapioca flour (polvilho azedo)
• 70 g. (or ½ c.) sweet tapioca flour (polvilho doce)
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• dash black pepper (optional)
• dash cayenne pepper (optional)
• dash nutmeg (optional)
• dash garlic powder (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Spray a mini muffin pan with cooking spray (or oil it).
3. Mix dry ingredients.
4. Mix wet ingredients. Blend in cheese. Blend in dry ingredients.
5. Pour batter into wells. Fill almost, but not, to the top.
6. Bake 15–20 minutes or until puffy and browned.

Variants

See the hard recipe for the many cheese choices.

I have already increased the cheese quantity, but some commenters said to double it (to 130g, which is about a cup of shredded cheese). This may be necessary for boring cheeses like farmer’s cheese.

You can replace the sour tapioca starch with more sweet tapioca starch as in the original easy recipe.

Use butter instead of oil.

Use crushed garlic instead of powder.

Add rosemary or ¾ tsp. aniseed.

You can half-fill the wells of a regular muffin tin, if that’s all you have.

You don’t absolutely have to bring the cold ingredients to room temperature, especially if you’re pouring from your refrigerated blender jug.

You might be able to mix this in a stand mixer with just a paddle attachment with enough force (i.e., speed). Beware of non-Newtonian fluid formation.