This is going to be a little rambling with a little of this and a little of that. I’ll get to the Ask the Alchemist after a couple announcements.
There will be an email going out making this offer but I’m going to toss it in there also for Wholesale customers.
Next week we are having what amounts to a pretty large discount on Certified Organic Uganda Semuliki, shipped direct from the East coast warehouse. Normally it is $8.78/kg (for a bag) and next week it will be $7.00/kg for 1-2 bags, $6.75 for 4-7 bags and $6.50/kg for a full pallet or more. Feel free to write me directly if you are interested beforehand and I’m happy to get that ball rolling for you. And it is worth noting there is a limited amount of around 2 MT so this is double limited, in both time and quantity.
One of the most common questions I get from new chocolate makers has to do with flavor profiles of various beans and my general answer is to use the search feature….that I’ll admit can be hit or miss. If you search for “fruit” you will get “there is no fruit to this chocolate” but not “blueberry and peach” which isn’t very helpful. I’ve wanted to fix that for some time and now we have.
We have put into place a new filter system that lets you quickly sort for ‘fruit’ but also if I’ve mentioned a prominent flavor of Fig or that it is a Fruit Bomb. I’m not going to list everything out here. The whole point is that it is more intuitive so please give it a look and see what you think. Feedback and constructive criticism is of course always welcomed. Oh, and for the time being, it is only on the Retail Store.
As small peak into my head about how I assigned some of the subjective attributes, first off, we only put in positive ones. You are not going to find “bitter” as it is the rare person that wants something heavily bitter. The same goes for astringent. Acidity on the other hand many people really like so it is there.
Also, the filters are not all encompassing or complete. They are to get you in the ballpark and in many cases are based on sort of a gestalt impression of the chocolate. After that you will want to read the detailed tasting notes.
Alright, enough of that. Time to move onto some Chocolate DATA. In this case that means a Double Ask the Alchemist. Before I do that, I need to wipe a little egg off my face. After announcing a couple weeks ago a helpful customer pointed out they could not find out how to submit a question so I went to the site to find the link…..um….and….well….I…um….couldn’t find it. It seems like in one of our updates we lost the link on the main page. Shoosh, no wonder the questions dropped off. Well, it is back in place and you can submit questions for me to answer here and the link to that is on the home page.
https://chocolatealchemy.com/ask-the-alchemist
I also want to clarify something. If you need immediate help, please reach out directly to me via our contact form.
https://chocolatealchemy.com/contact-chocolate-alchemy
Any question coming in via the Ask the Alchemist submission will be queued up to answer publicly as they fit in my semi-regular articles. That all said, I now have over a dozen questions and some are kind of short and easy so I’m going to tackle a couple at a time, hence DATA.
Onward!!
At what temperatures do we temper white chocolate?
You can find that right here in our Tempering section along with a bunch of other tempering data about 2/3 down the page.
https://chocolatealchemy.com/how-to-make-chocolate-the-complete-text-guide/#tempering-and-molding
The quick and dirty is that you heat it to over 100 F like any other chocolate, cool it until it slightly thickens (like any other chocolate) so it forms Type IV and V crystals (this happens at about 76-78 F) and heat it back up about 80 F (79 – 82 F) to get rid of the Type IV crystals.
Alternatively, you can use Silk and heat it as usual to over 100 F but this time just bring it down to 95 F and add approximately 1-2% grated Silk, wait for it to drop to 92-93 F and pour up. And yes, it is the same temperature as dark and milk chocolate. That is one of the glorious things about Silk.
In both cases (and for all chocolates) you want to leave it to set up in a cool place, preferably below 65 F. If it is above that or you just want to always do it, I really like refrigerating it 8-10 minutes, just until the wet gloss has gone away and then let it finish at room temperature. assuming it isn’t more than 75 F. If it is above 75 F (thanks climate change), I will cycle the chocolate in and out of the refrigerator in 8-10 minute intervals until the surface reads 70 F or below. Don’t be tempted to just leave it in the refrigerator the first time or you can force Type IV to form and your chocolate has a good chance of blooming.
Next question of our Double Feature.
I have a vision of a salted egg yolk chocolate - simply with the additions of egg yolk powder and salt to a white chocolate base.
I would assume that even a small salt addition would improve most chocolate but also understand the salt isn't fat soluble - would a melanger distribute this salt evenly at least? Or would it affect crystal formation perhaps when tempering? Or result in a gritty mouthfeel?
If that's the case, I could simply go the route of adding salt flakes as an inclusion on top when moulding.
I’m sitting here smiling as I really like this slightly uncommon kind of question.
I also used to think a small amount of salt would improve chocolate too. It is a great theory and in all my years of cooking experience it has been a solid go to technique. Unfortunately, I have never found that to be the case in chocolate. I do like on occasion a coarse flake salt sprinkled on the back of a bar, but to date I’ve never found that salt refined into the chocolate improved it by any metric and eventually lead to an odd and off taste and mouthfeel. It might be that it isn’t a water system. I’m not really sure. Regardless, yes, you’ll need to refine in the salt or it will give your chocolate some gritty texture.
As for affecting the crystal structure, this isn’t something you need to worry about. The key to understanding why this is is to grasp that all crystals and crystal structures are not created equal. Tempering is a fat based structure, composed of long chains of fatty acids stacking together. Slightly differently shaped fats can get into that structure and mess it up. Coconut oil is a prime example of that, as is butter fat, which explains why milk chocolate never quite has the hardness or snap of dark chocolate and that coconut chocolate can only be tempered with Silk. But salt crystals are not the same shape and basically have no reason or ability to get into the fat crystal. They might drift there, but they are just going to get pushed gently out of the way.
Now one thing that you might run into is the lecithin content in the egg yolk giving you some grief. Generally speaking, if you add lecithin, the amount you want is no more than 0.42%. Over that and it can have the opposite effect on viscosity and thicken your chocolate. This can be overcome by more cocoa butter so really I’m just tossing it out there as something to watch out for if it should happen. Overall it sounds like an interesting chocolate. I’d be curious to hear how it comes out.
That is all folks. Please keep those questions coming and happy chocolate making.