New York has its giant thin-crust pizza; Chicago has its deep-dish, and Puerto Rico will soon have its own pizza style: a thin crust made from breadfruit (pana) with Puerto Rican seasoning.
A breadfruit thin-crust pizza is what Jayuya-based company Amasar plans to launch on Aug. 17. The company makes all-purpose and pancake flours from breadfruit. The product is gluten-free and high in fiber, and it will be sold pre-cooked and frozen.
"Initially, it's going to restaurants, to food service," Marisol Villalobos, director and co-founder of Amasar, told Platea. After that, the expectation is to reach supermarkets so Puerto Ricans can make their pizza with the toppings they like most, "without guilt."
More breadfruit products: "The sky is the limit"
Amasar is already working on the launch of other breadfruit products in its flour line for the coming months.
There will be three new pancake and waffle flours in cacao, with Puerto Rican cacao, banana and blueberry flavors. They will also have two additional flours: brownie mix and muffin mix.
All the products are gluten-free, high in fiber and suitable for people on GLP-1 diets, including those using medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro.
After launching in Puerto Rico, they will also enter the U.S. market, as other Amasar products already distributed in states such as Florida, New York, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
"Everything you make with potato, absolutely everything, you can make with breadfruit, and more, because you don't make as many desserts with potato. Now, with breadfruit flour you can make countless desserts. I make cookies, cakes, brownies, flan. I make soup. The sky is the limit," Villalobos said about the potential of breadfruit products.
The potential of breadfruit
For Villalobos, a scientist and former chemistry professor, there is still a lot of potential to develop more breadfruit products, including frappés, ice creams and more.
Pharmaceutical use. She also mentioned that Amasar is working through a partnership with the Universidad de Puerto Rico en Mayagüez to use breadfruit flour in pharmaceuticals.
"(It would be used) as an inactive ingredient that helps compress tablets, but it provides fiber and is natural. And instead of coming from Africa, it's a cleaner, more local product," said the agribusiness owner, who produces the flours using breadfruit from her farm.
How did Amasar's breadfruit pizza crust come about?
With the idea of making a breadfruit pizza crust, Amasar contacted the Food Innovation Center at Oregon State University, which has an Agricultural Experiment Station and a team of food innovation experts, to develop this new product from its breadfruit flour recipes.
"I sent them my breadfruit flour and we developed the recipe together," she said. "We developed our high-quality flour here (in Puerto Rico) to our specifications. And we also told them we wanted a breadfruit pizza but with Puerto Rican seasoning."
The final product took more than a year to develop. The team in Oregon sent at least four different recipes before landing on the desired result. From there came the process of scaling up production with the possibility of freezing, which involved another round of exchanges.
Public testing. Then came the moment to put the breadfruit pizza crust to the test, which they did alongside other gluten-free pizzas.
"We held a focus group at a pizza place in Chicago called Nick's Pizza and Pub (known for its thin Chicago-style pizza)... All the participants were Anglo-Saxon. The pizza that won was ours, the breadfruit one with the Puerto Rican seasoning," Villalobos said.
At that focus group, no one knew what breadfruit was. "(They were) super intrigued and interested in the product because they were saying: Wow, I just ate a pizza made from a fruit. Are you serious?" she added.
In Puerto Rico they have also been testing their breadfruit pizza with small groups of people. "People say they like it more than the cauliflower one," Villalobos said.
How do you see the evolution of breadfruit in Puerto Rico?
Just as a breadfruit tree can take up to seven years to reach peak production, it has taken Amasar a similar amount of time, since 2018 with its first breadfruit flour, to introduce its products and broaden public acceptance. "It's seven years, so it has basically taken us that long," Villalobos said.
"I learned as a breastfeeding educator that to achieve cultural change you have to invest 10 years of promotion… I feel so proud because I feel that at Amasar we have been real protagonists in promoting breadfruit as a nutritious food of high value, generous, with incredible potential in Puerto Rico and I know we are seeing the results," she added.
Breadfruit production in Puerto Rico in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 was 240 quintales (one quintal = 100 pounds) each year, according to data from the Department of Agriculture.
The difference is that in 2024, 24,253 quintales of the fruit (2.42 million pounds) were imported, while in 2025, 14,138 quintales (1.41 million pounds) were imported.
Breadfruit growers organize. In addition to promoting the distribution of breadfruit trees through the Department of Agriculture, Villalobos has worked closely with other breadfruit growers not only on product development but also to organize as an agricultural trade group.
That is how she founded Agropana Inc., a nonprofit organization that seeks to bring together as many breadfruit producers in Puerto Rico as possible to find and expand opportunities with the fruit and its derived products, as well as to promote them.
Participating companies include Hacienda Gosén, with frozen breadfruit tostones, and Entre Panas, with various breadfruit bread recipes, which recently formed a partnership with Pan Pepín to develop more products together.
"What we want to do is joint marketing, for example, 'Eat breadfruit' or 'Breadfruit is a superfood,'" she explained.
This content was translated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
