artisanal thinking

…and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses. I agree, Lenin. And recently, due to the publicly printed word, the rallying cry of the people has been to shout from the prairie-tops, “Death to Bad Chocolate!” For, avocational artisan food was thrust into the limelight with Wednesday’s front page (…of the D section) introduction to the Chocolate Maker of Urbana, IL!

No doubt that the fallout from this momentous occasion has already become common knowledge. For instance, there was fellow culinary blogger, Jason Brechin’s post extolling, to food, of the importance of being honest. There were repercussions in the twitter-sphere, culminating in RTs by academics, Champaign’s first lady of food and even Massachutsian chocolate maker, Taza.

Of course there was also the reaction among Computer Scientists, which was slightly more skeptical. My advisor, Leonardo, in response to my statement, “grad school can be a depressing kind of place,” chided me for falling trap to the old journalist habit of casting quotes out of context in a sensational light. Apropos of same, my lab mate, Maji, laughed that I could have avoided redundancy by just saying, “grad school.”

The Century-Defining Event

If you’ve seen me around town recently, then surely you have heard me spiel about what I was referring to as the greatest event ever to be held in Urbana history. And no lie, that, for with my great friend and fellow grad student and fellow underground food artisan, Christopher, we unleashed upon the populace no fewer than six hand brewed beers, five hand made chocolates, one craft sour beer and two craft chocolates. Though their numbers matched I’m not sure we exactly paired one beer with one chocolate—being the laissez-faire-minded individuals we are. However, we did specifically get the sour-fermented de Rodenbach variëteiten van bier to pair with ‘the Men’s Club,’ Papua New Guinean chocolate named such because of its intense sour, vinegary and stale smoke notes.

Specifically for this party, Chris brewed an American Stout (technically, a hybrid of American & Oatmeal) that went well with my 85% Panamanian, mixing the roastiness of the beer with the savoriness of the chocolate. This was his first time brewing that style, but he was so pleased with it he told me he will fit it into his regular fermentation schedule. However, to really make this party and this beer special, after an initial fermentation of two weeks, Chris imparted even more chocolate flavor and aroma to his stout by letting 3oz of Panamanian nibs steep in the brew. It takes a devotion bordering on obsession, but the result this artisanal collaboration showcased was intrigue singularly achievable through the means of craft underground food.

As I’ve mentioned previously, this party also gave me the excuse to experiment with different origins, which led, thankfully, to cacao from Côte d’Ivoire. Last time I was raving about the toasted biscuity flavor of these nibs, but finally tasting the bars, I was overjoyed to discover an earthiness I had not yet known. This ‘taste of the soil,’ this terroir, was not a dry—almost chalky—dirt-iness—what I previously thought of as ‘earthy,’ rather there is a rich, full, even moist taste of decomposing wood! Though I still have not gotten anyone else to agree or maybe just admit to it, I primarily thought of something deeply mushroom-like coming from this chocolate. Whatever it is, I think my next bag of cacao may find its way to Urbana, IL via the Ivory Coast.

The Salt of the Earth

I left it out of the last post, but on the left is not a work of modern art, though the orange squares of our slightly salty caramel do make a nice portrait against the background of dark chocolate…no, this is the most popular chocolate bar I’ve made yet! The caramel is, of course, made by my partner Bill, who is a genius chocolatier in addition to being a research scientist in the atmospheric sciences department. As a result of not being as young and possibly with ‘it’ as my generation, Bill was a little conservative (in my opinion) with the salt in his salted caramel. Like a good Gouda, I wanted to occasionally crunch into a grain of salt which would release all the smoky chewy flavors his caramel had to offer. A permeating whisper of salt was there, but I’d like to occasionally hear it’s solo. Well, for the next batch of caramel, Bill heard my chorus, and doubled the salt content! I’m venturing out of my realm of expertise, but interestingly enough, Bill claims that the additional salt is affecting the way that the caramel crystallizes, and he’ll have to do some experiments to get the super-salty caramel to be chewy like normal. Sorry to those readers who crave long-winded scientific explanations, I’ll do some research and leave that to a later post.

However, the really interesting things are the amazing caramel filled chocolate truffles that Bill made with his caramel and my Panamanian chocolate. Complete with another dollop of chocolate and salt on top, we can set our sights no lower than to give Fran a run for her money as the unofficial chocolatier to President Obama. But we will have the advantage, because we have what she does not, artisan chocolate to empower artisan chocolatiers. I would rave about the complexities of these truffles for hours more, but words would be wasted, since what limited supply I had two days ago, has already been reserved or eaten up! The best I can do is leave you with another view what’s been blowing in on the winds from the West—which if you inhale deep enough, as I did on Sunday, yield hints of ginger, cloves and excitement wafting off the first experimental pumpkin truffles in Mahomet, with no end in sight (or smell).

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
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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

Indeed, and when at 5pm I arrived at home to find a lumpy burlap sack containing 50kg of fair-trade, organic, Panamanian cacao from the Cooperativa de Cacao Bocatorena sitting inconspicuously on my porch, I giggled and felt the commencement of my attack on Hershey, Nestlé, Cargill and all producers of industrial crap. I refuse to be bound by girlfriend, spouse, even pets…but so happily committed to the idea of chocolate, I am, that I recited my vows by investing in a $650 sack of fermented, dried seeds. I have no idea how the UPS guy got this thing up the steps and onto my porch, but I chuckled again that something so valuable was sitting outside for all the cacao-snipers and ruffians of Urbana to haul away and process themselves…perhaps an unfounded concern. But I see the beauty in this object, and girding my loins, I squatted down, wrapped my arms width-wise ’round this sweet smelling babe, then waddled up the stairs to my second-floor cacao storage chambers set her down heavily and sighed with relief.

I had forgotten to bring a camera with which to preserve and encase my excitement in bit-form, but mindfully I noted my fugacious fervor. While racing my bike back to work, I noticed that I’d been shed on, my bear hug with the cacao bag had left a jute imprint on my chest. When I returned to Siebel and told all of the new member of my family, I took a proud picture of the only chest hair I’ve ever known…or at least what hadn’t blown off while on the bike.

I feel a little ridiculous, but maybe it is not as uncommon as I think for sacks of beans to be delivered to student apartments…coffee roasters? I also feel ridiculous because I don’t really know what to do with this sack. I’m not sure how I’m going to store it, how to handle and take beans from it, and whether I really will make it through this thing. I worry that the tectonic pressure will build, and in some period of trouble with my chocolate making process, I’ll slip into some moment of clarity with the thought, ‘You’re a student. What do you hope to accomplish with 110lbs of cacao?’

In any case, the batch of Peruvian chocolate I molded on Sunday will, for the near future, be my last from that origin. Assuming my current rate of consumption, I am de facto an maker exclusively of Panamanian chocolate for the next 18-20 weeks. I have some plans for this cacao—one particularly exciting prospect is to make some Nutella which is not 50% sugar and 22% crappy-for-you fat. I plan to post recounting my research on pasta gianduja soon, but I will say that the main impediment to this experiment is to locate some bulk (but not 50lb bulk) quantities of whole milk powder. Attaining that would also open the doors to milk chocolate, white chocolate, ev’ry kinda chocolate!

This sack is a sea change and I am giddy yet nervous, but I hope the progress of our cacao, upon which all else chiefly depends, is now as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, I venture to predict kgs upon kgs of theobromian artisanry.

Lab Report

Yes, I am out of Peruvian cacao, finishing a small final batch last weekend. I took the opportunity to test a couple ideas, both of which were low on the success scale, which of course made them good experiments. The first was a chili and cinnamon bar that I’ve been putting off after my earlier troubles with mixing things into melted chocolate. As a friend was eating scrap fondue, he asked what was the red-brown powder sitting next to him, and I shared my plans for the spicy bar. I was again going let discretion overtake valor and defer this powder to another day, but prodded, I decided to try incorporating the powder as I had been doing nuts and sprinkled some cinnamon and Tiny Greens chilies onto the back of a bar I was molding. I tried to press the mixture into the chocolate a bit so that it would stick, but that doesn’t really work for tiny peppers and powders. I haven’t actually tasted this bar yet, but the presentation is not quite what I was going for and most of the cinnamon fell of the bar when I demolded it.

For my next amazing experiment I wanted to try making some kind of peanut butter bar, and I don’t mean like these. I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you mixed peanut butter and chocolate before molding, but I think the high fat content of peanut butter would inhibit the cocoa butter in my chocolate from crystallizing correctly, and we would end up with something squishy rather than snappy—not really a bar, more a spread. I had some other ideas, but I ended up just seeing what would happen if I dropped globs of peanut butter in the bottom of a mold and then pouring chocolate on top. I ended up with some kind of swiss-cheese bar, where the peanut butter (big surprise!) did not magically firm up and attach to the bar, but when demolding, it sat stubbornly in the mold and I held in my hands a greasy peanut cratered chocolate bar. Embarrassed, I put the bar back in the mold and resolved to deal with it later. I think I’ll just scrape out the peanut butter and eat it with the chocolate, which should taste really good, but, I need to go back to the drawing board for a peanut butter infused chocolate bar.

Call for Participation

With an open source ethic, I try to involve people in chocolate making when I can, and share all the information and recipes otherwise. I certainly don’t have all the creativity when it comes to interesting things to stick in chocolate, so I happily solicit the opinions of the readers of this blog as to what they’d like to see in the back of a bar. Share!