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Newbie
Mar 2, 2008 4:22:49 GMT -5
Post by FeralOne on Mar 2, 2008 4:22:49 GMT -5
I am sure a few of my questions have already been answered here, but I made one batch last week and wondered about a few things. First, when roasting, how exactly can you tell you roasted long enough? I had the Ghana Forestro '07 and the husks came off pretty easily on most of them, but some of them crumbled in my fingers. Yes, I am going about this very low tech. Rolling the beans between my finger to break away the husk. It's OK that they break apart, or are they supposed to come out of the husk whole? Not a big deal, just wondering if I did not roast them long enough? At what point do you add all the ingredients? When you put the chocolate into the Santha (or Spectra?) or before that point? I just ordered the Santha yesterday so I have no experience with it yet. I am very excited to get it in! Edit~found the answer to this in the Santha info page. Last question (for now) how long does the cocoa liquor stay good? Also, I ground it in a blender, which I ended up burning up the blade spinner thing oops!, and put it in a bowl, covered it with a cloth, the next morning it was covered with that white film stuff. Is that normal? I did not get any water in it, but it is very humid here, is it ruined? By the way, my first batch turned out really yummy, very gritty, but it tasted really good! My son even liked it, and he is the biggest chocolate critic there is (he's 12) ~~I LOVE your site John! Andrea
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Newbie
Mar 3, 2008 17:24:19 GMT -5
Post by jamescary on Mar 3, 2008 17:24:19 GMT -5
Hi, welcome Andrea! I'm still a bit of a newbie too, but hopefully I can help. In the whole process, roasting is arguably the step with the most creativity involved. It really is up to you when you think it's done. It's like cooking a steak or an egg -- there's 3 levels: underdone, just right for how you feel, and overdone. Whereas with steak and eggs you can tell by sight and texture (too juicy, etc), for roasting beans, you can tell by smell and taste -- has it reached that chocolate-y taste. Here's a cool breakdown of the different roasts for coffee beans (not sure if one exists for cacao -- would be a great resource if there were): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_roasting#DarknessI mixed the ingredients (heat the liquor a little and the butter will mix easily, if adding more) before putting in the Santha. The liquor should be fine for a long time. Keep it stored cool and dry. The white film is bloom and is caused by fats coming to the surface. There's nothing wrong with that, it has not been tempered. Just reheat it and work on it some more I made chocolate over the course of several days, turning the Santha off at night. I kept the liquor in the Santha and it was solid in the morning. As for reheating, I followed John's advice and put it in the oven. However, the Santha bowl's height is about 2/3 the height of my oven and has to sit on the element. So heating is tricky since the element can overheat the bottom of the bowl. I have a dehydrator which blows hot air and have used that to heat the oven and melt the liquor (I suppose a hair dryer set to Low will do the same thing).
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Newbie
Mar 4, 2008 5:00:45 GMT -5
Post by FeralOne on Mar 4, 2008 5:00:45 GMT -5
Thank You! I was just confused about a few things, hate wasting anything, though I know I will have to waste a little during the trial and error stage. A couple more questions though, I will probably have a few over the next few weeks, sorry if I become a broken record on some things. Cote d'Or Noir (my favorite brand) says 54% minimum cocoa mass. So is that semi-sweet or just dark? Or is that terminology just the actual taste and nothing to do with percentages? *A side note, that chocolate is what has made me decide to make it myself, I pay 1.35 Euros a bar for it here (approx. $2 American) and in the States it is around $7 a bar! Yikes! Is the total percentage of cocoa in a recipe the cocoa liquor? I ask because I got a little curious about the math when I read that the liquor is 50% cocoa solids and 50% cocoa butter and that most makers add extra cocoa butter. I assumed that the total amount of liquor is what is considered the cocoa in chocolate. Am I wrong? Did that make any sense? **Aha! I see that one is still in debate on this board... This one is completely out of curiosity, can you grind up nibs and boil them to get the butter and solids separate? I ask because I noticed that when I put my blender in the sink and filled it with really hot water the oils started to come to the surface. So I let it sit overnight to cool down and the butter had solidified at the top and looked the same as the chunks I bought. Obviously you would have to dry everything out to be able to use it, but I was just curious about it. I have no interest in making my own butter at this point, more than happy to buy it from John! Thanks for any input and thanks for listening to my rambling! Andrea
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Newbie
Mar 11, 2008 16:48:40 GMT -5
Post by jamescary on Mar 11, 2008 16:48:40 GMT -5
Hi Andrea,
I'm jealous! $2 a bar? Europe is way more chocolate friendly! Have you had Feodora? A friend of ours recently brought some back and it was fantastic.
I don't know too much about preservatives. I know that chocolate and white chocolate even more so are susceptible to damage from light and moisture. So, the best thing I can think of is wrap it in something non-transparent and keep it dry (maybe vacuum pack it).
The Chocolate Connoisseur, the book, has some percentages listed for milk and dark. Government agencies have requirements in order to use the term chocolate when describing the manufactured food. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but your numbers seem about right (10-20% for milk and 40% for dark.. I'm not sure about all those sweet ones (semi-, bitter-))
Yeah the trouble with the percentage number is that it doesn't give any indication how much is solid and how much is butter.. I believe brad's sochoklat has these listed for his chocolates which is cool.. There's also a link on one of the forums which had a nice explanation of couverture which has a specific amount of fat in it..
When I was reading about kokam butter, I noticed that they extract the oil from the seeds by boiling them. It seems like it would be possible to do so with cacao.. Not sure how useable the butter would be since it would probably contain some extra moisture and it might cause some chemical change in the butter from the heating.. I might give it a try with a small amount of liquor and see what happens..
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Newbie
Mar 13, 2008 16:06:16 GMT -5
Post by jamescary on Mar 13, 2008 16:06:16 GMT -5
One more note on the boiling liquor: I ran across a page that says this was a method used, before Dutch processing, for fat extraction, but not to make cocoa butter, but to make the hot chocolate drink. It would be interesting to see how much fat could be boiled out.
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