Back to Denver and back to school! The weekend was very nice, we went to the Davis Farmer's Market, saw our friend Christine, visited with my sister, Janell and had friends over for a grilled chicken and ratatouille dinner.
Our lecture today was on chocolate. We tasted 14 different types of chocolate and believe it or not, each one was different! Even the ones with the same percent of chocolate tasted different, depending on the manufacturer.
There are four different types of chocolate: 1. White chocolate, 2. Milk chocolate,
3. Semi-sweet/Bittersweet (which are actually the same thing) 4. Unsweetened chocolate. The thing that gives chocolate it's chocolate flavor is cocoa mass. Cocoa butter is what gives chocolate it's texture. White chocolate is made of cocoa butter, sugar and dairy-no cocoa mass so most people don't consider white chocolate, chocolate. Milk chocolate contains a minimum of 10% cocoa mass and cocoa butter, sugar and dairy. Semi-sweet/bittersweet contains a minimum of 35% cocoa mass and cocoa butter, sugar and NO dairy. Unsweetened chocolate should contain 100% cocoa mass and cocoa butter (no dairy, no sugar).
Chef Lexie talked about cocoa powder. There are two kinds: 1. Traditional or non-Dutch process, which is a lighter color (reddish), fruity and acidic. 2. Dutch process cocoa, which means an alkaloid has been added to the cocoa powder to neutralize the acidity. This makes the color of the cocoa darker as well as more chocolates.
We also learned NOT to use chocolate chips in place of chopped chocolate. Chocolate chips are made to hold their shape so have additives to help them keep their shape. We also were told NEVER to use Baker's chocolate because it has more wax in it than real chocolate. Chocolate, made especially for making candy also does not contain much real chocolate.
Couverture can be either white, milk, semi-sweet/bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate but is high in cocoa butter, which makes it more fluid. This type of chocolate is used mostly for fine chocolate work (putting a thin layer of chocolate on candy or making a thin candy shell).
There are three types of cocoa beans: 1. Criollo (which is the original strain of cocoa beans but is disease prone so accounts for only 1% of the world production of cocoa beans), 2. Forastero (which means "foreigners"), which accounts for 85% of the world production of chocolate and 3. Trinitario, which is a natural hybrid of the Criollo and Forastero cocoa beans. This last bean accounts for 14% of the world's cocoa production. Cocoa beans like 70-80 degree weather, year round (who doesn't?!) so grows in the warmer more tropical regions of the world. They also like 80% humidity (me, not so much humidity). From the flower stage to harvest takes 150 days. All cocoa beans are harvested by hand, never machine, otherwise you risk killing the plants.
To make chocolate, you pick the beans, ferment the cocoa beans and the pulp found in the pods. This is what makes chocolate taste like chocolate. Fermentation lasts anywhere from 5-10 days, depending on the bean. Then you dry the beans. At this point, the beans can be shipped to chocolate makers when they want to roast their own beans, which is the next step. Cocoa beans are roasted just like coffee beans. the darker the roast, the more intense the chocolate flavor. Next comes winnowing, when the beans are separated into the nib (you keep this part) and the husk (this part gets thrown away). The cocoa nib has equal parts cocoa mass and cocoa butter. next comes grinding, where the cocoa nibs are ground into a paste, which is called chocolate liqueur. The next step, milling, gives you your final particle size: this is also where texture comes in. The last step is conching: refining the flavor and texture by driving off acid and smoothing out the particles. You can lose some of your flavor by conching too long.
The percentages you see on chocolate labels refers to the combined total of cocoa butter and cocoa mass. The higher the percentage, the higher the quality of chocolate and the less sugar is used to make it. It is not, however, a garantee of flavor.
We learned to tempered chocolate today and also made truffles (chocolate ganache rolled in cocoa powder). Once we tempered the chocolate, we poured it into candy molds, which we will fill and finish tomorrow. Ganache is an emulsion of chocolate and cream.
We did not really spend much time in our assigned kitchens, so Chef Brian and Chef Dale made us a lunch of Salad Nicoise. We had Chocolate Truffles for dessert. We did not have bread today because both our bread guys were ill.
Corey and I start bread tomorrow. French bread gets done every day and we will learn to use the wood burning oven. We both gave Chef Lexie our list of breads we want to do over the next week.
Then home and more studying. I also need to get my project finished this week, it's due on Monday!
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