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at Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:38:41 GMT in
>,
(Larry Cordner) wrote :

>Alex,
>
>Thank you for your help, the link you gave for the 10lb block is sort
>of what I was looking for. I would have rather had more options than
>that. I really wanted 1-2Kg blocks or pastilles/discs, but oh well
>I'll have to get 10lbs if I get any at all. The milk chocolate is a
>maybe anyway just to please a few family members.

Again, if you have access to Cost Plus World Market, they sell the
Ghirardelli in broken-up chunks off the 10-lb bars. Given that it's also
pretty cheap, overall, it's economically feasible just to buy a bunch of
their 4-oz milk chocolate bars.

>As for the Michel Cluizel's Chocolat Grand Lait Cacao Pur Ile de Java
>50% I would love to get that. I've read virtually all your posts
>regarding chocolate and so I knew of this already. I just feel it is
>so wasteful to purchase four pounds of those little 5g squares all
>individually wrapped to bake with. I will try this chocolate for
>myself though. (probably with my next order

IMHO wasteful on the dollars, perhaps (because you're not saving yourself
any money over simply buying a bunch of the 100-g bars), but not wasteful
on the chocolate. Once you're at the point when you want the best, there's
no point in settling for less. And just because a chocolate is great
doesn't mean it's a waste to use it for an application other than straight
eating.

>If I might I want to ask a question regarding dark chocolate. Last
>week I ordered a few samples in preparation for the holidays. I
>purchased Amedei "Selezioni Toscano", Michel Cluizels Coffret
>Nuanciers Origins and Guittards "L'Harmonie" 64% 10g bars and a single
>Amedei 50g Chuao bar.
>
>I know you rave about the Guittard gourmet bittersweet but I didn't
>think the L'Harmonie 64% was very good. I wish I could get a small
>sample of the gourmet bittersweet to try.

Interesting. Personally I thought L'Harmonie 64% was excellent. What,
specifically, didn't you like about it? However, Gourmet Bittersweet is
totally different in flavour and certainly has much more chocolate impact
than L'Harmonie. I know around here (Seattle) Gourmet Bittersweet can be
found in a lot of bulk bins in local supermarkets, health food stores, etc.
You might try checking around a bit in your area.

> I absolutely loved the
>Amedei Chuao and I'll probably purchase a few 1Kg bars of that.

The Chuao is an extraordinary chocolate in every sense of the term. Once
you've tried it, it's hard to really like most other chocolates. However, I
recommend getting only one 1Kg bloc, not multiple, for the following
reasons:

1) Chuao is extremely powerful. This means less of it conveys more impact
to whatever you make with it.

2) While it is a supremely great chocolate, it works well in some
applications, poorly in others. For instance, I do NOT recommend it for
chocolate mousse: it will overwhelm the mousse completely. But for
brownies, it is simply the *ultimate* chocolate and the one you should use
in preference to all others.

3) It's in somewhat limited supply and IMHO there's an issue of being fair
to everybody. If you order multiple blocs, you may end up cleaning
Chocosphere out, which means others who might like to try it could end up
being deprived of that opportunity. Personally, I always like to try to be
at least somewhat considerate and not assume there's an infinite reservoir
of product available, especially when what I'm buying is something special
and which I think everyone deserves an opportunity to experience because it
is among the best.

> I also
>thought the Amedei Toscano Black 63% and 66% were very nice.

I wasn't as impressed with those. They're still exellent, but for instance,
I think Guittard's L'Harmonie is better than both. The Toscano bars to me
are a bit flat and generic.

> The
>Michel Cluizel purchase was a mistake on my part I really wanted to
>try his Coffret Nuanciers Percentage but I misordered. As for taste
>there were a few that I really enjoyed in that sampler, but I was so
>impressed by the Amedei Chuao that I probably won't buy any Cluizel
>dark this year.

This IMHO would also be a mistake. Actually, I think you made the right
choice with the Origins sampler, although for a good taste-test I recommend
trying 50g of a given chocolate at a time. The Origins sampler is more
interesting than the Percentage sampler in terms of giving you very
different chocolate tastes.

Meanwhile Cluizel is on the whole IMHO better than Amedei. It's just that
you tried Amedei's awe-inspiring Chuao first, which kind of ruins you to a
lot of other excellent chocolates. However, if you want a chocolate from
Cluizel that holds its own against Chuao or for that matter essentially
anything else, get Hacienda Los Ancones which is another world-class, mind-
blowing chocolate. Consensus on this one is also pretty strong - pretty
much everyone who's tried it has had not merely an enthusiastic response,
but a gushing, overflowing-with-praise response. And Noir Infini as well as
Amer Brut 72% are also very excellent indeed.

>Anyway my question is do you think the Amedei Chuao is a good choice
>over the Guittard gourmet bittersweet?

I did an A-B comparison of the 2 side-by-side. What I determined is that
it's apples and oranges. The 2 are so totally different in terms of flavour
sensation that to pronounce 1 winner would be irrelevant and impossible.
More details below.

>I'll probably be making truffles, some pastry and
>decorations from the chocolate I buy.

I think as a general-purpose utility chocolate for a wide variety of
applications, Gourmet Bittersweet is actually the better choice. As I said
earlier, Chuao is somewhat more narrow in application range. One of the
plusses about Gourmet Bittersweet is that it's incredibly versatile. You
can use it in just about any application and it will turn out fantastic.

However, *in the applications for which it works well*, Chuao is just
unbeatable. For example, using Gourmet Bittersweet in brownies would yield
superb results and you'd wonder how it could possibly get better than that.
But then you'd try the Chuao brownies and literally your conception of the
limits of the possible in quality would completely change.

For truffles, I think both chocolates work very well. Chuao is perhaps
marginally the better of the 2, by virtue of better texture, indeed, the
perfect texture and handling qualities for truffles. Flavour-wise they're
both about as good, again in totally different ways. But there are other
chocolates that I think will work equally well for truffles. I don't think
it's inconceivable that there might be a chocolate that would produce
better truffles than Chuao.

For pastries, a lot depends on exactly what you're planning on making.
Chuao works best with things that are supposed to be intense, dense, and
heavy, which is why, for instance, with brownies, it's exceptional.
Anything sweetened mostly with brown sugar is also a good fit. For things
that are supposed to be light, like souffle or sponge cake, it is just too
strong. With the typical layer cake, you should NOT use Chuao because there
is a chocolate again without peer for this application: Domori Carenero
Superior. That chocolate is, far and away, the one you should use for cakes
and you can get it in 500g tablets from Chocosphere.

Using Chuao for decorations is *definitely* a mistake. Again, it's too
strong and too overpowering, with the result that the decoration will be a
distracting flavour and diminish from whatever else it's decorating. You'll
taste more the Chuao chocolate than the item it's on!

For decorations, you want a mild, unaggressive chocolate that won't get in
the way. Now, the very best of these is Domori Porcelana, but first, it's
unavailable in bulk, and second, it has the same limited-supply issues as
Chuao, to an even greater degree, and so I think it would be excessively
greedy to buy it solely for making decorations with, if you were to start
buying large amounts. However, Guittard Colombian and Valrhona Araguani
*are* available in bulk, and besides being superb, mild chocolates for
decorations, are ones you must try anyway because they're just generally
excellent chocolates all 'round.

A good order thus might be 1 kg Chuao, 1 kg Guittard Colombian, and 2 500g
tablets Domori Carenero Superior. If you wanted to you might also get the
10-lb Guittard Gourmet Bittersweet (which, again, is so versatile that
you'll have *no* problem using it all up).

--
Alex Rast

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