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Bakery Cart · Cassava Cheese Bread

Pan de Almidón

Pan de Almidón — street food from Manabi, Ecuador
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Horacio Cambeiro / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Like Bolivia's cuñapé and Brazil's pão de queijo, it's made from cassava starch instead of wheat, a coincidence of parallel indigenous cassava traditions across South America.

Cassava starch is kneaded with cheese and egg into small ring- or roll-shaped loaves, then baked until chewy and golden. Bakery carts across Manabí sell them warm each morning.

Why it's made this way: Manabí's cassava fields supply the starch base, making this bread a direct product of the province's coastal-lowland agriculture.
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Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.