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.



--
Alex Rast

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