Casabe Bread

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Casabe Bread is a flat bread, as hard and thin as a cracker, made from cassava flour.

The flour comes from the bitter (not the sweet) type of cassava roots.

To make cassava bread, the cassava is grated, all the toxic juice squeezed out, then dried into a flour, and sifted.

The flour is spread over a hot griddle to form a large round circle, then flattened and lightly pressed together with a tool that looks like a trowel. It's flipped to cook the other side, then removed from the griddle, and cut into smaller pieces

Storage Hints
Cassava bread will store a long time; insects aren't interested in it. Store in a tightly-sealed container so that it won't go stale from moisture and air.

History NotesCassava bread is a traditional bread made by the Arawak Indians in the Caribbean and in South America; it predates European contact by many centuries.
19 Steps to Making Yucca Bread
Casabe is a thin, cracker-like bread made out of yucca. It is an important staple of the Garífuna diet and a custom inherited from the Arawak Indians, one of the Garífuna ancestors. The process to make casabe is as follows.
1. Harvest the yucca. Extract 18-20 pounds of this root.
2. Peel the yucca.
3. Wash and clean the yucca with seawater to give the roots a distinct salt flavor.
4. Grate the yucca with an egi, a wooden grating board embedded with small quartz stones.
5. Pack the shredded yucca into the ruguma, a 2-3 meter-long straining device woven out of palm leaves.
6. Hang the ruguma from the rafters.
7. Shake and stretch the ruguma to drain the poisonous liquid (cyanogenic glycoside) from the grated yucca.
8. Remove the yucca dough from the ruguma and leave covered with a towel to dry overnight.
9. The next morning, sift the yucca with the jívise (a large, braided sieve) to produce a refined flour.
10. Place firewood beneath the grill and light the stove.
11. Sprinkle chingaste (the material that did not pass through the jívise) onto the grill to determine the temperature.
12. When the stove is ready, scoop the yucca flour onto the grill.
13. Spread the flour over the grill, forming a round circle. Fill any holes with excess flour.
14. As the bread heats and begins to toast, sweep the loose flour away with a special yucca brush.
15. Sift a small amount of yucca flour onto the casabe.
16. Flatten the yucca bread with a wooden tool called the garagu.
17. Carefully flip the casave onto its other side. Sweep away any excess flour.
18. Flatten the bread with the garagu again. Brush and scrape off the extra flour. Use a knife to round the edges.
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19. Remove the casabe from the grill and allow to cool. Make incisions so the bread can be broken into smaller portions. Eat and enjoy!
    

1 pound of cassava (yuca root)
salt to taste

Preparation:

  1. Wash and peel the yuca (cassava).
  2. Using a grater, grate the yuca using the finest section.
  3. Using cheesecloth or a clean cotton towel, squeeze the grated cassava to remove as much moisture as possible and discard the liquid.
  4. Add salt to the yuca mixture and stir it in well. Break up any lumps.
  5. Divide grated yuca into equal parts and set aside. Depending on how big you want your casabe to be, I suggest 4 to 10 equal divisions.
  6. Heat a frying pan. (A cast iron skillet works well). Do Not add any oil.
  7. When the pan is hot, place a quantity of grated yuca in the middle of the pan.
  8. Spread it out with a spatula, or back of a spoon, into a thin circular cake.
  9. Cook until bottom is golden, then flip and cook the other side until golden.
  10. You may serve casabe warm or allow it to cool for storage. Cooled casabe is hard like a cracker.