artisanal thinking

Like so many before me, I’ve neglected my blog and now must give an ‘apology post,’ covering the events of the last month and promising never to abandon my readers again (lest, feeling spurned, they drop themselves from that elite category).

Executive Summary of October

Well, with doing research, assisting in the teaching (…and grading) of the most stressful class for Computer Science Undergrads, and actually making chocolate, I had to cut something out (in addition to sleep)! But that does not equate to idleness! I have:

• Found a new business partner, Bill from Mahomet. In the past, Bill was a chocolatier by hobby, but always had an interest in getting down to the roots, in making the journey from bean to bar, onto ganache and truffle. In the short time we’ve been working together, Bill has helped by making a homebrewed winnower, featured on the right. We are also combining our chocolate making/’tiering skills, with Bill making salted caramel, and me molding 70% dark Panamanian chocolate around squares of this chewy bliss, we may have created the most popular thing I’ve done yet.
• Been expanding my ever growing list of specialty chocolate making equipment. The latest is a ‘table top tempering machine‘ manufactured by the confusingly named ‘American Chocolate Mould Co’ (the flavours! the colours! bloody hell, lassie–we’re in America!). To those concerned that I am falling away from the tactile process of tempering chocolate on a marble slab, don’t worry, I still have the ability and am happy to do so, however, the main advantage and determining factor in using this tempering machine is that with its advanced technology, it can keep melted, tempered chocolate at precise temperatures I specify. Advanced technology? That’s right! This machine consists of a insta-read temperature probe for sensing, surrounded by an elevated steel bowl for holding, beneath which sit a motor for spinning, two light bulbs for heating, a computer case fan for cooling, and a microprocessor that solves NP Complete (that is—really hard) problems like ‘is the temperature greater than or equal to X degrees?’ to compute whether to turn on the light bulbs or the case fan. The ’special internet price’ for this information-age equipment is a measly $795, though I picked up a ‘barely used’ model on eBay for only $500. Thankfully, barely used, in this instance, did not mean, ‘not functional.’ I almost didn’t receive this machine, due to some snafus with paypal, the shipper, and my apartment from two years ago, but that is a story for another day.
• Finally acquired Whole Milk Powder! I learned that it is impossible to buy organic whole milk powder in anything less than 50lb quantities. Well, if I can not even settle on a girlfriend, then surely I’m not ready to be anchored by the constant needs of a bag of dry protein and fat that will go rancid if neglected for six months. Hence I sacrificed myself to the Damoclesian sword of pragmatism and bought 10lbs from an online spice merchant who claimed they got the powder from this New Jersey Dairy Operation. I am compromising on a couple levels, but in the meantime it has allowed me to experiment with:
• Nutella! Or rather, my own interpretation of that industrial sugar+trans-fat crap that puts more emphasis on the cacao and hazelnuts than on sweetness and thrift. Therefore, I reverse engineered the Nutella recipe, then promptly forgot it and forged my own path. I combined 20% hazelnuts, 35% cacao beans, 35% sugar and 10% milk powder and ground the result overnight. Nutella, or as it used to be called supercrema, contains only cocoa powder, and thus none of the crystalline action implied by cocoa butter. I thought with only 35% cacao, and over 10% non-cocoa butter fat, I would inhibit the crystals in cocoa butter from forming and in addition, eliminate the need for tempering, but this turned out to be quite wrong. What I ended up with is more precisely called pasta gianduja, a name which springs again from those early Nutellating Italians and is really a funny story, but… again fodder for another day. Needless to say, this first experiment was roughly a failure, but we will try again and we will prevail!
• Inaugural, daring, salted, Dark Milk Chocolate! Chocolate Makers don’t judge, and it is true that I enjoy seventy-five…eight-five…ninety-one…one-hun’erd-percent dark chocolate with as few as one ingredient:cacao beans—but the rich creaminess, silkiness and softness of milk chocolate is welcome any day, brothers & sisters, in our all-encompassing, non-discriminating, equal-rights for all cacao culture. Of course, we don’t mind a little darkness in our milk chocolate as well! Therefore the new word in the back-alleys of craft chocolate production is dark-milk chocolate, the best of both worlds! Complexity accompanying a higher percentage cacao content, and subtle allures of creamy, motherly milk (powder!). I molded my first batch of milk chocolate this Saturday, and with the second half of the batch, I tossed in a loving sprinkle of sea salt, and even a hazelnut or two to heighten the excitement. Observe the difference in color between a pure dark and a dark-milk, but know that dark-milk, unlike Hershey’s is more than brown (colored) sugar.
• Expanded my reach to other fabulous and sometimes frightening origins. Yes, I had to compromise again under the weight of pragmatism to settle upon conventionally farmed but fairly traded beans from Côte d’Ivoire, and nuthin doin’ Christian-conservative (that is, non-organic, non-fair trade certified) Papua New Guinea stock. But… how do they taste, you ask? Well! My tongue has almost been ripped out and smashed to pieces by the fermenty, vinegary and smoky PNG dark chocolate. Single Origin chocolate from Papua New Guinea is described like Scotch, ‘don’t drink it in pints. A sip, and you’re satisfied.’ A sip of this seems to clear my sinuses with its powerful aroma, but given the right flu, that might not be a bad thing. Though I have not yet made it into bars, the Ivory Coast nibs have been bringing a tremendously refined biscuit flavor with a little hint of fruit, but also some savory, meaty, salami quality to the party. Several people besides myself have admitted to being quite intrigued by this bean. Why did I get these when I still have a sack of about 80lbs of Panamanian cacao? What party is Ivory Coast bringing it’s flavors to? Well, these wonderful questions are explained by the fact that I am:
• Organizing a chocolate & beer (& chocolate beer) tasting party! With my great friends and fellow fermenters, the Bolts of Urbana, IL, we are holding, on Saturday Nov. 14th, 2009, the most exciting event of the century. That is correct, with >= 5 fabulous homebrews, including at least 4 stouts(!) and 5 different varieties of homemade dark chocolate, plus some NYC Mast Brother’s ‘Black Truffle Chocolate’, Missourian Askinosie’s ‘San Jose Del Tambo (that’s Ecuador, yo) Chocolate’, and Theo’s discontinued ‘Madagascar 65%’, the ticket price of $10, with proceeds to support local, underground food fetishists—The Prairie Table—is almost too trivial to mention.

As is plain to see, I have been up to so many exciting and revolutionary things that I must be forgiven this one transgression of not writing about it until now, and even then, only as a teaser of more detailed and exciting yarns to come. I will leave you now, reader, but not without the parting gift of a sneak-peak at the weekly Sunday email I have been sending out to select special supporters of DHS chocolate that provides updates (in lieu of this blog!) on my humble activities, and offers to arrange for a hand-wrapped and labeled and personally signed bar of chocolate to be bike-delivered from my doorstep to yours. You can amend my mistake of not including you in the email list by sending a note to danielhschreiber(at)gmail(dot)com
————–

Greetings and Saultations, Friends!

Sunday, a new week, a new rebirth, and an opportunity to stock your coffers with some extremely fine, extra fancy, but basically austere DHS dark chocolate. This week’s special is double!

On Thursday I took my partner’s salted caramel and combined it with 70% dark Panamanian chocolate to get something bitter-sweet, snappy, chewy and salty; delicious! As Bill’s former website ( http://www.chocolates-fudge.com/caramel.html ) makes explicit, these are the creamiest bars on the planet (still waiting for confirmation from Mars..)! Also on Thursday, I took my friend’s ‘black bacon,’ which is a molasses and rum cured traditional, artisanal bacon–I fried it in a skillet, then cut it up into slabs and molded this into Unapologetically Black Bacon, Panamanian Dark Chocolate. Unlike Vosges, who is content with ‘bits,’ us true meatheads demand nothing less than whole hunks to satisfy our hunky bodies. And like Laurence’s wife exclaims (cf: http://www.thislittlepiggy.us/2009/11/05/black-bacon/ ) this is one SEXY chocolate bar.

Hold on, that’s not yet the double-special, just Thursday’s contribution! Yesterday, Saturday, Nov. 7th, 2009, marked the inaugural Milk Chocolate of Daniel Harry Schreiber, Chocolate Maker of Urbana, IL! Blowing through all obstacles, I bravely forged a 55% Dark-Milk Chocolate, and for the last half of the batch I mixed in coarse sea salt to get my special–sultry and complex, salty and dry, Dark-Milk Chocolate. For those unawares, the 55% gives some info about the recipe (in particular, the percentage coming from cacao), which is 50% cacao beans, 5% cocoa butter, 15% dry whole milk powder, 30% evaporated cane juice. Which if I consult my calculus textbook, sums up to 100% totally awesome.

For the more traditional chocolate lover, I still have:
nib-chocolate bars;
habanero chili+cinnamon;
hazelnut+sea salt;
and of course, pure Panamanian dark chocolate.

Reply if you’d like us to bike-deliver some chocolate to your doorstep. Default is pure dark, but you can request anything else. Prices are: 1oz/$3, 2oz/$5, 4oz/$8. Note: because I’ve been experimenting so much with small batches, not everything is available in all sizes, email with your preference and we’ll work something out as close as possible

This week, I am going to grind and mold some bars from Ivory Coast beans, which, roasted, have a strong ‘biscuity’ flavor to them. In the second half of the week, I am going to try to make some Peruvian chocolate, which some of you may remember, has a very alluring soft-fruitiness to it.

Have fun!
–Daniel Harry Schreiber
Chocolate Maker of Urbana, IL

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 3:04 am and is filed under Business, Chocolate Making, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.