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semi-sweet chocolate - any differences?
at Sat, 24 Jan 2004 03:47:25 GMT in
>, (JimL)
wrote :
>So I have a brownie recipe, only my 213th to try (scientific purposes,
>of course).
>
>It calls for six ounces of semi-sweet chocolate, "chopped." I asume
>that means the hard squares, in the box, and try to chop them up,
>spill them all over the place, or else in my electric mini chopper and
>burn out the motor again.
>
>Then I think: "Here's a bag of Nestle's (or even Godiva, etc., etc.)
> chocolate chips (or morsels), already in small size. I can measure
>out 6 ounces out of a 12 ounce bag." And the price is a big
>difference.
>
>So my question: Is there a difference, if both are "semi-sweet,"
>between the hard squares and the chips in a bag?
Yes, there is a difference, but I'd advise you to use neither. Chocolate
chips are chocolate specifically formulated with a low cocoa butter
content, so that they don't melt as much in the oven, and keep their shape.
For most baking applications where you're going to melt the chocolate and
combine it with something, a high-cocoa-butter chocolate is preferable. In
a pinch, you can use chips, but the result will be drier and harder.
Meanwhile, the "hard squares, in the box" - i.e. "baking chocolate" are, as
far as I can tell, merely the industry's method of disposing of chocolate
of such poor quality that even the cheapest chocolate bar companies won't
use it. Baking chocolate is inevitably bottom-of-the-barrel, and will make
your chocolate desserts taste much worse than they could, lacking in
flavour, often stale. Usually baking chocolate in the squares is also low
cocoa butter.
What you really want is quality "couverture" chocolate, which has a high
cocoa butter content. The term sounds technical but virtually all chocolate
sold as solid chocolate bars, intended for straight eating, is couverture.
The other way you'll find couverture is as large, irregular, broken-up
chunks from a much bigger slab. It's common to see this in bulk bins.
As for brands, in the USA, Ghirardelli is the most commonly available
quality choice. They sell good chocolate in 4 oz bars, and they even call
it in some cases "baking chocolate" - but you won't find it in a box
wrapped in paper squares, it's in bars, which BTW are also good to eat
straight. Callebaut and Guittard, meanwhile, dominate the broken chunks
market - and both are excellent. You can use even more prestigious, high-
end chocolate bars, packaged for straight eating, from companies like
Valrhona and Michel Cluizel, and your results will be superb, albeit at
pretty exorbitant cost. Even Hershey's Special Dark will be a huge
improvement over the baking squares.
A nice advantage of using bar chocolate is that it's easy to chop - they're
thin enough that a knife will make quick work of them. Using a food
processor, incidentally, is risky because it's easy for the processor to
overheat and thus melt the chocolate. The result is a sticky, ugly mess
inside your food processor. Chopping with a knife is more reliable.
--
Alex Rast
(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)
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