Breads · 2/2

Bread · 1587

Beijus and tapiocas

Pernambuco's everyday “bread”: sweet cassava, grated, squeezed and toasted in a pan until it crackles. Thin and crisp, or thick and soft.

  • 10–12 beijus
  • 1 h 30 from the root
  • 15 min with ready tapioca

You'll need

From the root, as in 1587

  • 1 kg fresh sweet cassava (aipim, yuca)
  • 1 pinch salt (optional)

Shortcut

  • 300 g hydrated tapioca (goma de tapioca), instead of the cassava

Tools

  • A fine grater, a clean tea towel, a sieve, a cast-iron or non-stick pan and a spatula.

Outside Brazil, to make hydrated tapioca: rub 250 g tapioca starch with 100 ml water into damp crumbs, then sieve.

How to make it

  1. Peel and grate. Trim the ends, cut away the brown skin and the pinkish layer under it, halve and pull out the woody core. Grate on the fine side of the grater.
  2. Squeeze. Put the mass in a clean cloth and twist it hard over a bowl until it stops dripping. The mass should be damp but crumbly.
  3. Save the starch. Let the liquid stand 1 hour: a white starch settles at the bottom. Pour off and discard the yellowish liquid, scrape up the starch and mix it back into the mass. It binds the beiju and makes it crisper.Don't drink or reuse that liquid.
  4. Sieve the mass, crumbling it with your hands, until it looks like damp, loose flour. Add the salt if using. (With the shortcut, start here: crumble and sieve the ready tapioca.)
  5. Thin beijus. Heat the dry pan over medium heat. Spread 3–4 tbsp into a thin disc, 2–3 mm, without pressing hard. In about a minute the edges lift and the disc sets: turn it with the spatula. Lower the heat and keep turning every minute until dry and lightly golden, 5–6 minutes in all.
  6. Cool on a rack: they crisp as they cool. Keep in a very dry jar for 3–4 days. Gone soft? 5 minutes in a 150 °C oven.

Thick tapiocas

The same mass, 1 cm thick, over low heat with a lid on the pan, 4–5 minutes a side, until cooked through. Eat hot, dipped in the stew's broth.

The story behind it

Soares, 1587: from the pressed mass “fazem mais … umas filhós, a que chamam beijús”, flat cakes called beijus, “tão delgadas como filhós mouriscas”, as thin as Moorish fritters, cooked “até que ficam muito seccas e torradas”, until very dry and toasted; and “tapiocas, as quaes são grossas como filhós de polme”, thick as batter fritters (pp. 189–190). Brandão, 1618: beijus “se servem na mesa em lugar de pão, e duram muitos dias”, served instead of bread, and they keep for days (p. 178); the starch from the liquid “se mistura com a farinha”, is mixed into the farinha (p. 176).

Use only sweet cassava sold for eating, never bitter, and never eat the mass raw. Sources