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Food

Make Pão de Queijo, the Gluten-Free Brazilian Cheese Bread

Like cheese puffs but with tapioca and loads of Parmesan.

There are few combos as perfect as cheese and bread. We could make comparisons to Lennon and McCartney or gin and tonic, but we won't. We don't need too. As a human with a stomach, you know exactly how good cheese + dough tastes, especially when melted into a borderline pornographic cheese pull or perfectly toasted sandwich.

What you might not know, however, is the pão de queijo.

A traditional bread snack popular across Brazil, pães de queijo are bite-sized balls of freshly baked, cheesy dough. Great with jam or butter—or simply on their own—it is impossible to eat just one of these addictive Brazilian-style cheese puffs.

RECIPE: Pão de Queijo

Making pães de queijo is almost as easy as snarfing an entire bowl of them. You heat milk, butter, salt, and water with tapioca flour (gluten-free, btw), and stir in eggs and grated cheese to form a dough. Queijos de minas—a semi-soft Brazilian cow's milk cheese—is traditional but Parmesan works just as well.

The dough is then spooned out onto a baking sheet and baked until golden. At this point, the recipe instructs you to "serve immediately" but trust us, once these cheesy balls come out of the oven, you won't need telling twice.