Brazilian kefir cheese breads

By Nik, founder of 東歐嚴選｜kefir.link and former chef · Updated 2 November 2026

Pão de queijo are small Brazilian cheese breads with a crisp, cheese-scented crust and a chewy centre a little like mochi. They are made with tapioca starch instead of wheat flour. Here milk kefir takes the place of the milk, adding a tangy, yogurt-like note that suits the starch.

A farm-kitchen swap from Minas Gerais

The bread began on farms in Minas Gerais in colonial times, when wheat flour was rare, expensive and often poor. Cooks used cassava starch instead, with eggs, fat, salt and leftover pieces of hardened, cured cheese, and every farm handed down its own version. It reached cities such as Belo Horizonte from the 1950s, and frozen ready-to-bake dough made it famous across Brazil in the 1960s. In Brazil it is now also made with kefir in place of milk.

Where the chew and the puff come from

Tapioca starch gives the breads their chewy, elastic texture, and much of the puff comes from water turning to steam in a hot oven. In a lukewarm oven they stay flat and never get a crisp crust. Eggs help the dough hold the steam; without them the breads turn dry, hard and crumbly and rise less.

Tapioca absorbs liquid differently from batch to batch, so a soft dough may need a little more starch, added a spoonful at a time; too much makes the breads dry and rubbery. Tapioca also mellows the cheese, so a sharp cheese such as Parmesan comes through better than a mild one.

With coffee, jam or a glass of wine

The breads taste best warm, with coffee, fruit or jam at breakfast, and their savoury cheese flavour also suits a glass of wine. In Brazil they are filled with guava paste, dulce de leche, cream cheese or bacon, and a little minced garlic in the dough makes a more savoury batch. Once cool they firm up, but 10–15 seconds in the microwave softens them again.