The Brazilian Bread That's Naturally Gluten-Free

Warm, airy, chewy, cheesy ... while also being gluten-free and keto? It sounds too good to be true, but there's a South American bread that's naturally gluten-free with no modifications. The best part? It's delicious. Pão de queijo is a Brazilian cheese bread known for its crispy exterior and soft, airy inside. The name pão de queijo translates from Portuguese to "cheese bread," though its texture and shape are quite different from the conventional loaf-shaped bread we're accustomed to in the United States.

Pão de queijo is a round, roll-shaped bread that is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Its key ingredient is tapioca flour, which gives it a distinctive chewy texture and makes it gluten-free. The flour is typically mixed with eggs, milk, butter or oil, and grated cheese — usually Minas cheese, a semi-hard cheese from Brazil, or you can substitute parmesan, cheddar, or mozzarella. When baked, these bread balls develop a crispy, golden crust speckled with cheese while remaining airy and stretchy inside.

This beloved snack originated in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and was originally just made from leftover tapioca starch. The cheese and milk were added to the recipe about 200 years later when these ingredients became more plentiful. Today, it is often enjoyed for breakfast, as a snack, or alongside a traditional Brazilian stew called feijoada. It's tasty eaten alone, but it is also popular to dip it in sweet condiments like jam or honey.

Bread is typically made from wheat flour, which contains gluten. Gluten is a protein that gives bread its structure and elasticity. So just by using bread and water, the bread will rise and hold together properly. Pão de queijo, however, is made with tapioca flour, a naturally gluten-free flour extracted from the starch of the yuca root. Tapioca flour lacks gluten, so it does not provide the same binding properties as wheat flour, but it does tend to bind together better than other gluten-free flours. It is also denser and absorbs more liquid than wheat flour, resulting in a chewy, slightly stretchy texture.

Cheese and eggs in pão de queijo help bind the ingredients together as well, eliminating the need for gluten as a structural component. Often, other gluten-free breads also require eggs or ingredients like psyllium husks to bind everything together.

In recent years, pão de queijo has become more popular globally and is now available outside of Brazil. A brand called Brazi Bites produces a frozen version sold in supermarkets and online in the U.S. In fact, a huge haul of a 12-bag pack of Brazi Bites goes for under $100. But the cheesy bread only contains a handful of ingredients, so it's easily made from scratch. You can buy a 4lb bag of tapioca flour on Amazon for $15  and combine it with the other ingredients for fresh pão de queijo. If you liked reading about this gluten-free bread, check out cloud bread as well.