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Roots and tubers from Marshall Islands

Bwiro (Marshallese fermented breadfruit)bwiro

Bwiro is ripe breadfruit that is peeled, cut up, soaked in sacks in the sea, drained and then packed into leaf-lined boxes, drums or baskets to ferment. After about a month it is a yellow, dough-like paste with a strong smell, and it keeps for a year or more if the leaf lining is renewed. It is rinsed, kneaded and cooked with coconut milk before eating.

Fully documentedRoots and tubers31 days – 2.1 months

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold practice with no fixed recipe. One UH account fills cloth bags with about 200 lbs of fruit each; a Majuro informant's relatives sent bwiru in baskets of about 15 kg.
Ripe seedless breadfruitSkins scraped off with cowrie shells; the fibrous core removed and the fruit cut small[atchley1985]
SeawaterThe bagged fruit is soaked in the lagoon[atchley1985][cpis]
Fresh banana leavesLine the storage box and are changed every week[atchley1985]
Coconut milkFrom grated coconut in water; the dough balls are boiled in it[atchley1985]

Total time across the recorded steps: 31 days – 2.1 months

Start
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What changes: Ripe breadfruit is scraped with cowrie shells, cored and cut small

Step 1 of 6
Peel, core and cut the ripe fruit
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactobacillus
Leuconostoc
Pediococcus
Yeasts

Output: small pieces of breadfruit in a burlap bag (coconut-leaf baskets in the past).

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Bwiro is ripe breadfruit that is peeled, cut up, soaked in sacks in the sea, drained and then packed into leaf-lined boxes, drums or baskets to ferment. After about a month it is a yellow, dough-like paste with a strong smell, and it keeps for a year or more if the leaf lining is renewed. It is rinsed, kneaded and cooked with coconut milk before eating. Made in 6 steps over 31 days – 2.1 months. The longest step, pack into a leaf-lined box and ferment, takes 30 days – 2 months (Atchley J 1985). In pit-fermented breadfruit (mā) generally, a related Pacific ferment, naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc and Pediococcus, with small amounts of wild yeasts does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step30 days – 2 monthsReported[atchley1985][rmi-docs]Pack into a leaf-lined box and ferment

What makes this one different

Unlike Ponapean mar, which goes straight into a leaf-lined earth pit, bwiro is first soaked in the sea and kept above ground in leaf-lined boxes, drums or baskets. Atchley and Cox note that seawater soaking is not done in Polynesia.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Baked-first bwiro (UH account)Squeezed after a two- or three-day salt-water soak, baked in the um, then stored in baskets or biscuit tins for 12 months or more.
  • Telib (Peleliu, Palau)A similar seawater method, stored in baskets on stone platforms.

Safety

The leaf lining must be changed to keep stored bwiro sound. Maggots and spoiled parts are sorted out when the box is opened.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Missionary Laura Whitney, on Ebon in 1871, wrote that islanders turned to biro, buried breadfruit, in the months without fresh fruit, and missionaries adopted it as a Sabbath food that needed no cooking fire. Bwiro is still eaten on Sundays in Majuro.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [atchley1985] Atchley J., Cox P.A. 1985, Breadfruit fermentation in Micronesia, Economic Botany 39(3):326–335 (Majuro section; read from a scanned copy)paper
  2. [ctahr-fn68] Lincoln N.K., Uowolo J., Lapiyalur H., Rieber L., Autufuga D., Akaka H., Silva J. 2026, Making Mā, Fermented Breadfruit, University of Hawaiʻi CTAHR Extension publication FN-68gov
  3. [cpis] University of Hawaiʻi Cooperative Pacific Islands Studies, Plants and Environments of the Marshall Islands, Mā (Artocarpus altilis)web
  4. [rmi-docs] RMI nuclear documents archive, Marshallese food account (bwiro ready after two months)archive