A roasted breadfruit with patches of charred black rind, cut open to show soft creamy white flesh, with thick pale slices beside it on a wooden board. — A roasted breadfruit, its rind scorched black, cut open and sliced.

Baked Breadfruit (1697)

Name: Baked Breadfruit
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 1 h 45 min
Total time: 2 h 10 min
Cuisine: Pacific Islands
Ingredients: 2½ lb whole mature green breadfruit, one fruit; ½ tsp flaky salt, for the table

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Baked breadfruit as William Dampier saw it made on Guam in 1686: a whole green fruit baked until the rind blackens, then scraped and sliced like bread.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 28, 2026

Recipe makes: 1 breadfruit, 6 servings
Prep: 15 min
Cook: 1 hr 45 min
Total: 2 hr 10 min

Roasting takes 1½ to 2 hours, depending on the fruit’s size. Allow 10 minutes for it to cool enough to handle before scraping.

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A roasted breadfruit, its rind scorched black, cut open and sliced.

The story behind the recipe

On Guam in 1686, breadfruit was the island’s bread, and the visitors ate it hot. William Dampier, sailing with Captain Swan’s buccaneers, described how the islanders picked it green and baked it until the rind turned black, then scraped that crust away. His page describes the islanders’ method; it is not a recipe, and it gives no heat, time or size. What was left, he wrote in his New Voyage Round the World of 1697, was “of a pure substance like Bread.” While the ship lay at anchor, a nearby village baked it for the English every day on the Spanish governor’s order.

What did breadfruit taste like to Dampier?

It tasted like bread to him, as long as it was fresh. He compared the inside to the crumb of a penny loaf. On the tree the fruit hung on the boughs like apples, round and about the size of a loaf, with a thick, tough rind. Ripe and yellow it was sweet, but the islanders wanted it green and hard for baking. In its eight months of season, he wrote, they ate no other bread.

He had never seen it anywhere else, and the islanders told him it grew on the other Mariana Islands too. The trees gave more than food. In the Chamorro of the Marianas the seedless kind is lemai and the seeded kind dugdug, and Georg Fritz, the German district officer on Saipan, wrote in 1904 that the Chamorro there fished inside the reef from outrigger canoes made of the wood of both.

Making it today

Breadfruit turns up fresh at Caribbean, Pacific Island and some Asian grocers. Choose one that is full grown and firm, green with a little yellow showing, without soft spots: Dampier’s “full grown, while it is green and hard.” We roast it whole, unwrapped, in a hot oven so that the rind can blacken as his did; many modern cooks wrap it in foil to keep the flesh moist. The salt is our addition for the table. With the coconut milk pork broth it makes the other half of a hot meal at anchor. How a village came to bake it for the ship is told in What Did Buccaneers Eat When They Reached Guam in 1686?

The Natives of this Island use it for Bread: they gather it when full grown, while it is green and hard; then they bake it in an Oven, which scorcheth the rind and makes it black: but they scrape off the outside black crust, and there remains a tender thin crust, and the inside is soft, tender and white like the crumb of a Penny Loaf. There is neither seed nor stone in the inside, but all is of a pure substance like Bread: it must be eaten new; for if it is kept above 24 hours, it becomes dry, and eats harsh and choaky; but ‘tis very pleasant before it is too stale.

William DampierA New Voyage Round the World (London: James Knapton, 1697), pp. 296–297

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Ingredients

For 1 breadfruit, 6 servings. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for 1 breadfruit, 6 servings.

Whole mature green breadfruit, one fruit2.5 lb
Flaky salt, for the table1/2 tsp

Ingredients as written here

2½ lb whole mature green breadfruit, one fruit
½ tsp flaky salt, for the table

Equipment

Rimmed baking sheet
Small sharp knife, lightly oiled
Metal skewer
Oven mitts

Instructions

Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C) with a rack in the middle.
Rinse the breadfruit under cold water to wash off any sticky white sap and dirt, and dry it. Cut a shallow cross, about an inch long, in the base so steam can escape.
Set the fruit on the baking sheet, stem end up, and roast for 1½ to 2 hours, until the rind is blackened in patches, steam escapes from the stem and the cross, and a skewer pushed in at the cross slides through to the center with no resistance.
Leave it on the sheet for about 10 minutes, until you can hold it in an oven mitt.
With the oiled knife, scrape and peel away the blackened rind, down to the thin pale layer underneath.
Cut the fruit in quarters from stem to base and cut out the spongy core from each quarter.
Slice the quarters thickly, sprinkle with the flaky salt and serve hot, as bread.

Nutrition

155calories per serving

Recipe makes: 1 breadfruit, 6 servings
Servings: 6

Estimated per serving (6) from USDA FoodData Central values for raw breadfruit, about 150 g of flesh each.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

One fruit is one batch; for more, roast several fruits side by side on the sheet.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

We set the oven heat, the roasting time, the vent cut and the skewer check from modern roasting recipes. The sap is sticky, so oil the knife before cutting. Like Dampier’s, it is best eaten the day it is baked. Chill leftovers within 2 hours and reheat slices in a hot pan with a little oil.

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.