"Alex Rast" wrote in message
...
at Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:21:37 GMT in
, (JMF) wrote :


"Alex Rast" wrote in message
.. .
at Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:42:55 GMT in
,
(Karen) wrote :

Alex Rast wrote:

By my measure, 9 ounces of flour is 2 1/8 cups. So is it 9 ounces
or 1 1/8 cups (5 ounces)?


1 1/8 cups. (I find my old scale has some serious problems)

So the 12 ounces of unsweetened chocolate is really about 8 ounces?
VBG What a disappointment :-).

No, because I didn't need to use a scale for that, I had a
pre-measured amount guaranteed to be 12 oz. So it really is 12 oz
chocolate.

It's really hard to get unsweetened chocolate over here in Europe. Is
there someway to use, say, 70% or even 85% chocolate (e.g. by Lindt) and
somehow adjust the recipe?

I suppose you could, by simply noting that for instance a 70% will thus
have about 30% of its weight in sugar. Thus, you would have to increase
the
amount of chocolate to 17 oz and decrease the amount of sugar by a
commensurate 5 oz. However, I haven't tried it, nor would I recommend it.
The recipe I gave specifies brown sugar, so you'd be taking out molasses
in
the substitution (chocolate uses white sugar) and while you might be able
to compensate with a bit of molasses, everything now is changing and you
might as well start over to create your own scratch recipe.

Furthermore, unsweetened chocolate typically contains more cocoa butter
(about 50%, as opposed to the about 40% of a typical sweetened chocolate),
and that further complicates matters because of the changes in fat ratio.
All in all, I think experimenting would involve exactly that - it wouldn't
be the same recipe - you'd have to tweak everything.

Far better and easier would be to order unsweetened chocolate on-line from
sources in Europe. For instance, Michel Cluizel, makers of the Noir Infini
chocolate that is the chocolate of choice for the recipe (it's the one *I*
use), have a website at http://www.fontaineauchocolat.com. There's also
Domori (http://www.domori.com) who have an excellent unsweetened in the
Puro. In addition, since you're in Italy, it shouldn't be too hard, with a
little searching, to find a shop selling Domori.

Great info. Thanks very much.

John