Ancestral Bread · Cassava Flatbread

Casabe

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It's made with zero yeast, salt, or leavening — just grated cassava root pressed dry and toasted on a flat clay griddle, a technique that predates the Spanish arrival by centuries.

Bitter cassava root is grated, pressed to remove its toxic juice, then spread thin on a hot griddle called a burén and toasted until firm and slightly crisp, like a large flatbread or cracker. It's still made and sold around Baracoa, Cuba's oldest settlement, much as Taíno communities made it before Columbus arrived.

Why it's made this way: Casabe is a direct survival of Taíno indigenous cooking, and Baracoa — where Taíno descendants held on longest — is where the tradition never died out; UNESCO added it to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2024.