Biscoito de Polvilho Salgado - Airy and salty beach snacks from Brazil
This recipe makes a big portion of the dough and turns into a lot (!) of snacks because their size increases drammatically during baking. The dough can however easily be prepared and saved in the fridge for later baking. The main ingredient for making the snacks comes from the cassava root and specifically the polvilho azedo flour (sour starch) that is gluten free. The recipe is based on the recipe from this site (in Portuguese), so go there for pictures of the process.
Ingredients
Yields around 10 baking trays of snacks (a lot).
| Amount |
Ingredient |
| 500 g |
Polvilho azedo (can be bought from tasteoflatinamerica e.g. here or here) |
| 200 ml |
Oil (tasteless) |
| 200 ml |
Boiling water |
| 200 ml |
Room temperature milk |
| 1 |
Egg |
| 1 1/2 tsp |
Salt |
Instructions
- Boil the water and heat the milk to room temperature.
- In a bowl mix the polvilho azedo with the salt.
- Add half of the boiling water and mix well (dry and clumpy dough)
- Add half the milk and half the oil and mix well (e.g. using your hands)
- Add the rest of the milk, water, and oil and keep mixing until the dough is homogeneous. This can take some work, so using a stand mixer could be beneficial.
- Add the egg and mix until fully combined.
- Put the dough into a plastic / piping bag and cut a small hole from which to pipe the dough.
- Pipe the dough onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper. The thickness of the cookies should be quite similar for even baking, but shapes / lenghts are totally up to you! Traditionally either sticks or rings. The snacks move during baking, so don’t spend too much time getting the just right. For references the thickness should be around half a cm.
- Bake at 200°C until they start to get golden brown. It might be beneficial to turn the baking tray halfway through, if your oven heats unevenly. Keep an eye on the snacks as they bake quite quickly and because it is fun to watch them get bigger and move around! Notice that when the snacks start to get some color, smoke is generated in the oven - the smoke does not (necessarily) mean that they are burned.
The cookies only become crisp after cooling down. Afterwards, keep them in an airtight container.