Daring Bakers, May: Pão de Queijo



This month's challenge was hosted by Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado!, a very talented Brazilian who this month brings us Pão de Queijo, which is a cheesy bread with a popover-like consistency--airy, chewy, and flavorful. They serve Pão de Queijo by the basketful at Brazilian steakhouses, and I enjoy it even more than the copious amounts of meat and the delicious vegetables they serve. As another bonus, these are gluten free and delicious!


This is what mine looked like. They're pretty pretty, aren't they, with the flecks of toasted cheddar jack in them?


Now let's take a closer look.








OHHHHH! Looks like my popovers were more like popunders. Or Flatovers. Flatunders, or underpoppers.


I think I went wrong with the batter. The original recipe makes 80 puffs, which is about a 6 waistline inches more than my Hun and I need, so I quartered it to make 20. Unfortunately, the original recipe calls for 1 to 3 eggs, depending on however many you "need" . . . to get it "right." I figured I'd just use one whole egg and be all right. The texture of the dough was similar to ambrosia.


I was supposed to have a dough thick enough to form into balls, and I was able to, though they were, er, loose, soft balls.


In the oven, they flattened out considerably, then kinda sorta started to lift back up.


Just not enough to become fully ballsy. They were more like cookies. Cheese cookies.


So they weren't as light and fluffy as they could've been, but they still had some decent air and chew--poppy enough! The next time, I'll probably stick to doing no less than half the recipe and make sure the recipe has a bit more meat to it--more meatball, less ambrosia, with no flattening at all after forming.

You can check out my fellow DBers' results by following their links through our blogroll.

Comments

Renata said…
Hi Julie, sorry to hear about that, but I laughed a lot about all the names you gave to your non-popover pão de queijo haha!
You could have used less than 1 egg, all you had to do was lightly beat it to mix yolk and white, and slowly add only as much as needed to make the dough come together. The "ambrosia" look was due to too much moistire that did not allow the "gummy" pieces to bond together. Still, I'm sure it tasted good!
Thanks a lot for participating!

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