Pao de Quiejo with SPAM

A few months back, I saw a colleague's post that he was on his way to Brazil! I couldn't help but message him, if he could buy some Pao de Quiejo (Brazilian Cheese Bread) mix for me if convenient because I've been craving for this local Brazilian snack which we really enjoyed when we were there. It's a good thing, he was nice enough not to ignore me, in fact, he went out of his way to get me a couple of packs of the Pao de Quiejo Mix that was so easy to make (which I blogged about here).

While Pao de Quiejo mix is very easy to make, it still entails work, so it was a few weeks before I got the energy to bake them. I made them one Saturday when I woke up and I decided I wanted to eat Freshly baked Pao de Quiejo with Spam for Brunch.

All you need is 1 Pack Pao de Quiejo Mix, 2 Eggs and 1/2 Cup Cold Water
Plus SPAM if you want to stuff them like I did

For the classic Pao de Quiejo, this is all you need.

Sofia helped me make our brunch.

Just put in all the wet ingredients and knead
for 3 minutes until everything is absorbed.

Then you make it into balls depending on the desired
size.

We made our balls bigger this time and we only yielded 16.

Then comes the SPAM. I cut the SPAM in big cubes.
I cut a thick slice, and divided it into 6 to get sort of equal sides.

Then I just flattened a dough ball, but the spam in the middle...

Then I rolled the dough to cover it. You can see that the dough was a bit
stretched thin.

The instructions say bake for 40 minutes but both times I made it,
the bread starts cracking (meaning it's done) at around 20 minutes.

These are the freshly baked regular Pao de Quiejo.

And this is the Pao de Quiejo with SPAM.

The inside of the Pao de Quiejo with SPAM was much cheesier,
because it was kept moist by the SPAM.

My little girl coincidentally wearing her Garota de Ipanema
(Girl from Ipanema) shirt.

Picnicking outside our house.

This experiment was a success!

Really good brunch food. Goes really well with espresso too.  just saying.


Note: While I was researching how to make Pao de Quiejo with filling, I discovered that you can actually buy Pao de Quiejo Mix from Amazon. You can visit the link here.