Classroom lesson · Food · 🇰🇮 Kiribati

Te Bua-Toa — Fermented Breadfruit

An ancient way of preserving food on small islands far from shops

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Te bua-toa is a traditional Kiribati method of fermenting breadfruit so it can be stored for many months. Breadfruit is a large green fruit that grows on trees and tastes a bit like bread when cooked — that is how it got its name. Because islands can sometimes have seasons when food is less plentiful, people learned long ago to preserve breadfruit by burying it in pits and letting it ferment.

Tell me more

Breadfruit is one of the most productive food trees in the world — one tree can produce hundreds of fruits every year. The fruits are about the size of a football and can be roasted, boiled, or fried. When ripe, the flesh becomes soft and starchy, filling and nutritious. On its own, it has a mild flavour that works well with fish, coconut, or salt.

To make te bua-toa, ripe breadfruit is peeled, cleaned, and packed tightly into underground pits lined with leaves. Over weeks or months, natural fermentation preserves the fruit and changes its texture and flavour. The result is a dense, tangy paste that keeps for a very long time. In the past, when a long voyage was planned or a poor season expected, fermented breadfruit was an important emergency food store.

Fermentation is a technique humans discovered thousands of years ago — and it is used all over the world to preserve food. Cheese, yoghurt, sauerkraut, and miso are all made using fermentation. Te bua-toa is Kiribati's own delicious version of this ancient tradition, connecting the islands' food culture to a worldwide story of human cleverness.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

01Before refrigerators existed, people had to find clever ways to preserve food. Can you think of other preservation methods used around the world?
02Fermentation changes the taste and texture of food. Can you name a fermented food you have tried? Did you know it was fermented?
03Breadfruit was important for long ocean voyages. If you were sailing across the Pacific for a month with no shops, what three foods would you want to bring, and why?

Try this

Classroom activity

Make a 'world fermentation map'. On a large world map, mark as many fermented foods as you can find and label each one with its country and what it is made from (e.g. Japan — miso — soybeans; France — cheese — milk; Kiribati — te bua-toa — breadfruit). Try to find at least eight foods from eight different countries. Which continent has the most on your map?

Te Bua-Toa — Fermented Breadfruit

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Discussion prompts

Classroom activity

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