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Alex Rast
 
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Default Guittard gourmet bittersweet

at Thu, 29 Apr 2004 00:03:42 GMT in >,
(Blake Jones) wrote :

>In article >, Alex Rast wrote:

....
>> I'll also point out that I don't consider including milkfat in
>> chocolate to be dishonourable

>
>Of course, it has its place. As you said, it's all about how it tastes.
>It just seemed to me that the term used to describe it ("butter oil")
>suggested that it was being used as a cocoa butter replacer, rather than
>a flavor enhancer; presumably it doesn't have any of the tasty non-fat
>milk solids that milk and cream have.


It's clarified butter. I suspect some people might imagine something very
funky were going on if the term "ghee" were used. Chocolatiers have
experimented for years tweaking formulations with small to trace amounts of
various things, in order to achieve a specific desired texture and melting
properties. Soy lecithin is also used to reduce the proportion of cocoa
butter needed. Often the reason they do this is so that they can increase
the amount of non-fat cocoa solids included. In order to get by with an
absolutely pure cocoa butter formulation, your cocoa butter percentage has
to be a certain amount, and for a fixed sweetness, this means inevitably
reducing the amount of non-fat cocoa solids relative to what you can
achieve by other means. It only takes a small amount of certain additives
to make an enormous difference on the texture you can get with a fixed
amount of cocoa butter. So that gives you latititude to increase the
intensity of flavour by increasing the non-fat cocoa solids. Of course,
it's possible to achieve the same thing by reducing the amount of sugar,
and so, for instance, Domori has 80% cocoa solids in their Grand Blend
chocolate, with about the same intensity as certain 70% bars. However, this
comes at the expense of some sweetness, and if there's not enough sugar,
chocolate has a tendency to taste one-dimensional. Besides, many
professional chefs have specific sugar ratios they need and so given that
you're working under those constraints, your choices are either chocolate
with lower flavour intensity or chocolate with texture-enhancing additives.

Vegelate, meanwhile, is different, because both palm kernel oil and Crisco
make the texture decidedly worse, giving it a sticky mouthfeel like peanut
butter. And the flavour is also diminished. So in the case of vegelate, the
reasons for the addition can be reduced to the starkly obvious goal of
cutting costs. But neither soy lecithin nor milkfat are particularly cheap
(especially not milkfat, especially right now) and so usually the goal when
these crop up in chocolate is not to cut costs but to reach a specific set
of texture and flavour goals.

....
>> Where are you at? I can probably either point you at a source or send
>> you some, depending on your situation.

>
>I'm just north of Guittard Central, in San Francisco. There are lots of
>local retailers in town that have the little L'Harmonie and Soleil d'Or
>samplers, a fair number that carry a selection of the 1 kg E. Guittard
>bars, and there's a wholesaler just south of here that has pretty much
>the complete Guittard line, including the 10 lb. Gourmet Bittersweet.
>But I haven't found a place that has GB in less than 10 lb. quantities.
>
>So if you happen to know of any place in the SFBA that carries it in
>smaller quantities, that would be great.


First thing to do is to check the bulk bins at your local co-ops. Many of
them will carry Guittard because the major West Coast distributor to the
co-ops distributes Guittard, and Gourmet bittersweet is the distributor's
"standard" bulk-bin bittersweet offering.

Some supermarkets with bulk sections also have it, because if they have a
bulk section, and especially if they have a health-foods section, that is
likely to be stocked by the same distributor.

It's easy to get it (in low volume) by mail order, too - simply go to
http://www.dilettante.com where you can order it as "Premium Bittersweet
Couverture 63%" It comes in 9 oz sacks.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Company also uses it as their standard bittersweet
- I can't recall if they sell the straight chocolate or not but I think so
and I'm sure if you asked nicely they would sell you some.

If after all this you're still out of options, then I'd be glad to send you
some - Seattle and SF aren't that far away.

> If not, I'd suggest a mail
>swap - e.g. there's a retailer here that's selling partial slabs of
>Domori's Carenero Superior couverture, at a price point that's more
>appealing than their 8g samplers


Are you sure this is the Carenero Superior varietal? TTBOMK Domori sells
blocs of the Grand Blend, Esmereldas, and Sur Del Lago but I've never seen
Carenero Superior offered in bloc form.

> - but it's been getting pretty hot
>recently, and the proper packing material might cost more than the
>chocolate...


What really kills you is the shipping. Sending a double-packed, gel-iced
package FedEx Priority Overnight is a bomb. The packing material itself is
usually OK, price-wise, but what you're really paying for is the careful
shipping.


--
Alex Rast

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