Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsVery High Salt Content + Expensive - I Found a Solution
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2012
My husband and I are both gluten intolerant and we watch our salt. The buns are easy to make and tasty but they are too salty. The nutrition statement for this product is very confusing. The package states that the box of mix will make four buns. The nutrition statement, on the side of the package, states that a bun contains 140 mg sodium. But, when you read the fine print, you can see that the nutrition statement is actually based on making 10 tiny buns from one package. So, using the package to make four buns, each bun would actually contain 350 mg sodium. For anybody watching their sodium, that's too much salt for one bun.
Also, four not-very large buns from one box of mix is pretty expensive.
I realized that there's not much else in this mix except tapioca (manioc) flour and salt. You add your own wet ingredients and, optionally, cheese.
My solution: I found many recipes on the Web, in English, for manioc buns or pao de queijo which is the Brazilian name for manioc buns. The recipes that I found are esentially the same as the instructions on the Chebe box. I bought Bob's Red Mill tapioca flour (four 20 oz bags for about $12.00) from Amazon. To use up my remaining boxes of Chebe mixes, to dilute the salt level, in a bowl, I emptied the box of Chebe mix, added the same amount of Bob's unsalted tapioca flour (2 cups), and double the amount of wet ingredients required just to make the mix.
The resulting dough was stickier than the original Chebe mix, but the buns that I made were incredibly good. They tasted similar to southern biscuits. They were hot and steaming with an excellent texture. I baked them in an ungreased stoneware pan and they did not stick to the pan.
After I've finished my remaining the Chebe mixes, I'll attempt to make more buns by using the rest of my Bob's tapioca flour with the same proportions of wet and dry ingredients that the Chebe mix uses.
I'm not an experienced baker - does anybody have any idea how to make my lower salt dough less sticky - more oil, more liquid, more flour?
