Hello Folks:

I just found out about Criollo chocolate and now I'm more
confused than ever. I went to El Rey Chocolates and decided
to look around and shop for something. However, I couldn't
figure out what I needed to buy.

There is Chef's Choice, and Baker Choice. I decided to go
and get the Baker's Choice and came to find out there are
8 more choices. Choices I have no idea about.
Could anyone explain to me these:
Apamate 73.5%
Gran Saman 70%
Mijao 61%
Bucare 58.5%
Caoba Milk 41%
Macuro 70%
Cariaco 60.5%
Irapa Milk 40.5%

I'm assuming the percentage is the amount of Cocoa but I have no idea
what any of them mean. In addition, to make a brownie should I use
Chef's Choice or Baker's Choice? How much do they differ?

Thanks,
Eddy

P.S. I posted this question in the Baking Forum and got no answer.

at Fri, 12 Dec 2003 04:29:47 GMT in <426909fc.0312112029.49221897
@posting.google.com>, (Eddy) wrote :

>Hello Folks:
>
>I just found out about Criollo chocolate and now I'm more
>confused than ever. I went to El Rey Chocolates and decided
>to look around and shop for something. However, I couldn't
>figure out what I needed to buy.
>
>There is Chef's Choice, and Baker Choice. I decided to go
>and get the Baker's Choice and came to find out there are
>8 more choices. Choices I have no idea about.
>Could anyone explain to me these:
>Apamate 73.5%
>Gran Saman 70%
>Mijao 61%
>Bucare 58.5%
>Caoba Milk 41%
>Macuro 70%
>Cariaco 60.5%
>Irapa Milk 40.5%
>
>I'm assuming the percentage is the amount of Cocoa but I have no idea
>what any of them mean. In addition, to make a brownie should I use
>Chef's Choice or Baker's Choice? How much do they differ?
>
>P.S. I posted this question in the Baking Forum and got no answer.

You just needed to be a bit more patient. Typically you can't expect an
instant response - not on the order of a chat group. In addition, it would
perhaps have been best to post your question here at the outset since it's
a chocolate question. Usually you get the best response posting to the most
narrowly targeted NG that still fits your question. Anyway, here's the
reply I posted yesterday on the baking newsgroup:

Yes, the percentage is the total cocoa solids (defatted cocoa solids +
cocoa butter). The names are just that, names. Apamate, Gran Saman, Mijao,
Bucare, and Caoba are made using Carenero Superior beans (an elite, strong
Criollo). Macuro, Cariaco, and Irapa are made using Rio Caribe Superior
beans (a slightly less-prized, somewhat milder bean with a greater
proportion of Forastero genes in it.)

For the Carenero family, the dark chocolates come in 2 different cocoa
butter ratios: high (= smooth, melty) and low (= a bit rougher, dry).
Apamate and Mijao are the high-cocoa-butter chocolates. Because of the
particular formulae, they emphasize higher cocoa butter at the expense of
defatted cocoa solids, so they're not as intense. Thus Gran Saman is
hyperintense, Apamate merely strong, Bucare moderate, and Mijao somewhat
subdued. The low-cocoa-butter formulations are also more appropriate when
you're incorporating them into a recipe that already has very high fat,
e.g. chocolate ice cream, chocolate decadence, or when they're going to be
in an oven as chocolate itself, typically chocolate chips, where
excessively fast melting could pose problems. The high-cocoa-butter types
are better for coating, and for things with lower fat in the other
ingredients, such as cake.

> In addition, to make a brownie should I use
>Chef's Choice or Baker's Choice?

These aren't different types of chocolate, they're different delivery
formats. The Baker's choice gives you a 1 kg bloc. Chef's choice gives you
a box with 3 1 kg blocs. Essentially it's simply more chocolate.

As for which to use for a brownie, it's hard to tell without seeing your
recipe. But if you want to choose El Rey, I'd probably go with the San
Joaquin for brownies. Its flavour profile would be the best fit.

If you want to try Criollos, also check out Domori, Amedei, Bonnat, Michel
Cluizel, or Valrhona, all of whom offer pure Criollo bars. I've listed them
in order of which ones I'd try to find first, based on a combination of the
number of different Criollo varietals they carry and the quality of the
chocolate they produce. All of them are IMHO better quality-wise than El
Rey. http://www.chocosphere.com is a great place to find many of them.

The "big-name" criollo varietals a

Porcelana - the purest Criollo, also the one with the mildest flavour.
Extraordinarily delicate. Don't bake it in anything - this one is best
eaten straight.

Chuao - undeniably the most powerful, very "dark" in flavour. A legendary
chocolate. Incredibly versatile: works well for straight eating, baking,
ice cream, milk chocolate, you name it. Some people find its distinctive
bitter finish jarring.

Carenero Superior - has an unmistakeable "tropical" flavour to it, complex
and bold. It's acquired a stellar reputation in the last few years, which
is by and large deserved.

Ocumare - commonly crossbred with Forasteros. The purebreed is a fairly
mild, somewhat earthy/woody chocolate. A natural fit for brown sugar.

Java - actually, a region more than a type, but most cocoa sold
specifically as "Java" is Criollo. Sharp and spicy, quite unlike the 4
above. It's got a creamy finish reminiscent of Porcelana, which makes it
the ideal bean for milk chocolate, as many manufacturers indeed use.

Guasare - brand new and not so developed. I've not seen a pure Guasare bar
yet. Earthy and deep, somewhat similar to Ocumare. El Rey may be
experimenting with it.



--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Hey Alex:

Thanks for all the information you gave me. Sorry, if I seemed a
little impatient. I wanted to get the chocolate today, to make the
brownies tonight.
Anyway, Here is the recipe (its from Williamsburg Chowning's Tavern)
Ingredients:
1 Cup (2 sticks) unslated butter 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla
8 Ounces unsweetened Chocolate 2 Cups of Flour
(Finely Chopped Chocolate) 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
7 Large eggs 1 Cup coarsley chop Pecans
3 Cups of sugar

Melt the butter & chocolate together. In a large bowl mix the eggs,
vanilla & sugar until Frothy. Blend the Choclate & butter. Stir in
the Dry stuff (Baking powder & flower) until you have a smooth dark
batter.
Pour in a buttered 10x15x1-inch jellyroll pan and cook in a 350
Degrees F pre-heated oven for approximately 30 minutes (or until
done).


> For the Carenero family, the dark chocolates come in 2 different cocoa
> butter ratios: high (= smooth, melty) and low (= a bit rougher, dry).
> Apamate and Mijao are the high-cocoa-butter chocolates. Because of the
> particular formulae, they emphasize higher cocoa butter at the expense of
> defatted cocoa solids, so they're not as intense.
??? I'm sorry but I'm really new to this. Not as intense chocolate or
butter flavor? (I'm assuming chocolate flavor here)
What do cocoa solids do for the chocoalte?


> If you want to try Criollos, also check out Domori, Amedei, Bonnat, Michel
> Cluizel, or Valrhona, all of whom offer pure Criollo bars. I've listed them
> in order of which ones I'd try to find first, based on a combination of the
> number of different Criollo varietals they carry and the quality of the
> chocolate they produce. All of them are IMHO better quality-wise than El
> Rey. http://www.chocosphere.com is a great place to find many of them.

I just wanted to try one first. As you can tell I have no idea what a
good chocolate brand is, but I found El Rey when I did a search on
Criollo Cocoa.
Anyway, the first batch I made was with Hershey's (Yuck!!). I tried
one piece, and decided to take the rest to work (they eat anything at
work & they like it).


> The "big-name" criollo varietals a
>
> Porcelana - the purest Criollo, also the one with the mildest flavour.
> Extraordinarily delicate. Don't bake it in anything - this one is best
> eaten straight.
>
> Chuao - undeniably the most powerful, very "dark" in flavour. A legendary
> chocolate. Incredibly versatile: works well for straight eating, baking,
> ice cream, milk chocolate, you name it. Some people find its distinctive
> bitter finish jarring.
>
> Carenero Superior - has an unmistakeable "tropical" flavour to it, complex
> and bold. It's acquired a stellar reputation in the last few years, which
> is by and large deserved.
>
> Ocumare - commonly crossbred with Forasteros. The purebreed is a fairly
> mild, somewhat earthy/woody chocolate. A natural fit for brown sugar.
>
> Java - actually, a region more than a type, but most cocoa sold
> specifically as "Java" is Criollo. Sharp and spicy, quite unlike the 4
> above. It's got a creamy finish reminiscent of Porcelana, which makes it
> the ideal bean for milk chocolate, as many manufacturers indeed use.
>
> Guasare - brand new and not so developed. I've not seen a pure Guasare bar
> yet. Earthy and deep, somewhat similar to Ocumare. El Rey may be
> experimenting with it.


Thanks again for all the information you gave me. I found one local
store here in Tacoma that at least sells El Rey. Maybe I can try that
and decide to get a better one for the final batch. I wanted to bake
brownies as a dessert for the Christmas Dinner. Anyway, hope you
enjoy the recipe.

Eddy

"Eddy" > wrote in message
m...
> Hey Alex:
>
> Thanks for all the information you gave me. Sorry, if I seemed a
> little impatient. I wanted to get the chocolate today, to make the
> brownies tonight.
> Anyway, Here is the recipe (its from Williamsburg Chowning's Tavern)
> Ingredients:
> 1 Cup (2 sticks) unslated butter 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla
> 8 Ounces unsweetened Chocolate 2 Cups of Flour
> (Finely Chopped Chocolate) 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
> 7 Large eggs 1 Cup coarsley chop Pecans
> 3 Cups of sugar
>
> Melt the butter & chocolate together. In a large bowl mix the eggs,
> vanilla & sugar until Frothy. Blend the Choclate & butter. Stir in
> the Dry stuff (Baking powder & flower) until you have a smooth dark
> batter.
> Pour in a buttered 10x15x1-inch jellyroll pan and cook in a 350
> Degrees F pre-heated oven for approximately 30 minutes (or until
> done).
>
You can use plain old Baker's Chocolate for this recipe, instead of making
yourself crazy. Use any chocolate that is marked 'unsweetened' or
'bittersweet' and it will work.

at Sat, 13 Dec 2003 02:43:28 GMT in
> ,
(Eddy) wrote :

>Hey Alex:
>
>Thanks for all the information you gave me. Sorry, if I seemed a
>little impatient. I wanted to get the chocolate today, to make the
>brownies tonight.

Usually it's best to post questions several days in advance on newsgroups.
Sometimes you can get an answer right away, but you can't count on it. I
generally post questions a week before the information I need is relevant.

BTW, sorry for not being able to respond sooner on your follow-up posts. I
was out of town for a couple of days.

....
>> For the Carenero family, ...
>> Apamate and Mijao are the high-cocoa-butter chocolates. Because of the
>> particular formulae,... they're not as intense.
>??? I'm sorry but I'm really new to this. Not as intense chocolate or
>butter flavor? (I'm assuming chocolate flavor here)
>What do cocoa solids do for the chocoalte?

Cocoa butter is not regular dairy butter, it's the fat of the cocoa bean.
So a high cocoa butter content will not make the chocolate taste buttery.
The high-cocoa-butter chocolates from El Rey don't have as intense a
chocoalate flavour.

As for what cocoa solids do, first, I will make the distinction between
defatted cocoa solids and simply cocoa solids. Cocoa solids include both
the defatted cocoa and the cocoa butter. Defatted cocoa solids are the
powder you get if you remove all the cocoa butter from chocolate. As for
what they do, they lend virtually all the flavour. It's not all in the
defatted cocoa solids - there is some in cocoa butter, which tends to round
out the flavour and lean it a bit more away from earthy flavours (pure
cocoa tends to taste a bit harsh and earthy by comparison to chocolate).
Nevertheless, the defatted cocoa solids are what make chocolate, by and
large, taste like chocolate.

>
>I just wanted to try one first. As you can tell I have no idea what a
>good chocolate brand is, but I found El Rey when I did a search on
>Criollo Cocoa.
>Anyway, the first batch I made was with Hershey's (Yuck!!). I tried
>one piece, and decided to take the rest to work (they eat anything at
>work & they like it).
>

at Sat, 13 Dec 2003 23:05:55 GMT in <nXMCb.190147$ri.27544237
@twister.nyc.rr.com>, (Tea) wrote :
>You can use plain old Baker's Chocolate for this recipe, instead of making
>yourself crazy. Use any chocolate that is marked 'unsweetened' or
>'bittersweet' and it will work.

I disagree - strongly. Baker's is incredibly bad chocolate, IMHO absolutely
the bottom of the barrel. The OP mentions above that he wasn't satisfied
with Hershey's. If so, I would say it's a virtual certainty he won't be
satisfied with Baker's, either.

>Thanks again for all the information you gave me. I found one local
>store here in Tacoma that at least sells El Rey. Maybe I can try that
>and decide to get a better one for the final batch.

You're in Tacoma? In that case, you've got it made. Simply drive up to
Seattle and visit either PCC (who stocks Michel Cluizel, maker of the best
unsweetened in the business: Noir Infini), or DeLaurenti, who stock
Guittard, Valrhona, Bonnat, and a host of others. There are still more
stores in Seattle that have all sorts of good chocolate - try Larry's
Market, Metropolitan Market in Queen Anne, Central Co-Op/Madison Market in
Capitol Hill - the choices are almost endless.

> I wanted to bake
>brownies as a dessert for the Christmas Dinner.

In that case, I think your timing is perfect. You're asking just enough in
advance that you can expect good results.

> Anyway, hope you
>enjoy the recipe.
>

As those who frequent this NG know, I have my own brownie recipe which IMHO
defines perfection in brownies, but yours does look pretty good. It's going
to come out cakey and sweet, from the looks of it. There'll be some chew to
them as well.

at Sat, 13 Dec 2003 03:02:16 GMT in
> ,
(Eddy) wrote :

>Hello Alex:
>
>I went to the website you gave me Chocosphere or something close to
>that. I looked around and found that Valrhona has a Chuao chocolate.
>However the Chuao chocolate is Bittersweet.

You should not buy the Chuao from Valrhona from Chocosphere because they
are carrying the *definitive* Chuao chocolate - Amedei. Amedei's Chuao is
almost as good as chocolate gets, period. The Chuao will make *awe-
inspiring* brownies, if you're willing to spend that much, because its
flavour profile is almost the perfect one for a brownie.

> The recipe I have calls
>for unsweetened.

It's easy to substitute bittersweet for unsweetened, when you have the
cocoa solids percentage listed - you simply adjust the amount of chocolate
upwards by the ratio of 100/cocoa solids percentage, and decrease the
amount of sugar in the amount of (100-cocoa solids percentage)*{amount of
chocolate you obtained in the first calculation}. So, for instance, your
recipe calls for 8 oz of unsweetened chocolate. If you decide to go the
ultra-splurge route and use Amedei Chuao for your Christmas brownies,
first, you note that Amedei's Chuao is 70% cocoa solids. So, the amount of
chocolate you need is 8*(100/70) = 11.4 oz. As a result you need to
decrease your amount of sugar by (11.4*30%) = 3.4 oz. It's best to weigh
this but you could approximate sugar with 1:1 volume to weight, and then
take out 3.4 oz of sugar from where you started, leaving you with
2 cups, 12.6 oz.
I'll note that you'll thus need 323 g of chocolate, i.e. a minimum of 7 50g
bars, which at $7.75 each, would perhaps make these the most expensive
brownies in the world, containing $54.25 in chocolate! Still, if you want
to go that far, it might well be worth it...

> Now there is a whole bunch of terms that seem to
>describe the same.
>What do all those things mean anyway?
>
>Unsweetened

Chocolate with no, or at most, a trivial amount of sugar in them (it's
typical, for example, for unsweetened to have traces of sugar from the
manufacturing process). 99% and above is unsweetened.

>Bittersweet

Vague. Generally, the second-least-sweet grade of sweetened chocolate
(after "extra-bittersweet" chocolate). The USDA defines it as any sweetened
chocolate over 50% cocoa solids. IMHO that's being very liberal - anything
with only 50% cocoa solids is going to taste very sweet. By my definition,
bittersweet starts at about 66% cocoa solids and goes up to about 75% cocoa
solids.

>Semi-sweet

Similarly vague. Generally, the middle of the range in sweetened
chocolates. The USDA's definition is between 35% and 50% cocoa solids. IMHO
a more appropriate range is between 55% and 66% cocoa solids.

>Bitter

Even more vague. This is more of a common term in Britain. It can either
mean a rather bittersweet dark chocolate, or an unsweetened chocolate.
Usually in Britain it means bittersweet because true unsweetened is pretty
rare there.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Hello Alex:

I went to the website you gave me Chocosphere or something close to
that. I looked around and found that Valrhona has a Chuao chocolate.
However the Chuao chocolate is Bittersweet. The recipe I have calls
for unsweetened. Now there is a whole bunch of terms that seem to
describe the same.
What do all those things mean anyway?

Unsweetened
Bittersweet
Semi-sweet
Bitter

Are these things describing the same thing or different things. I
know what unsweetened means (that there was no sweetener added).
Please help, everytime I decode one system, another crazy code word
appears.

Eddy

> Porcelana - the purest Criollo, also the one with the mildest flavour.
> Extraordinarily delicate. Don't bake it in anything - this one is best
> eaten straight.
>
> Chuao - undeniably the most powerful, very "dark" in flavour. A legendary
> chocolate. Incredibly versatile: works well for straight eating, baking,
> ice cream, milk chocolate, you name it. Some people find its distinctive
> bitter finish jarring.
>
> Carenero Superior - has an unmistakeable "tropical" flavour to it, complex
> and bold. It's acquired a stellar reputation in the last few years, which
> is by and large deserved.
>
> Ocumare - commonly crossbred with Forasteros. The purebreed is a fairly
> mild, somewhat earthy/woody chocolate. A natural fit for brown sugar.
>
> Java - actually, a region more than a type, but most cocoa sold
> specifically as "Java" is Criollo. Sharp and spicy, quite unlike the 4
> above. It's got a creamy finish reminiscent of Porcelana, which makes it
> the ideal bean for milk chocolate, as many manufacturers indeed use.
>
> Guasare - brand new and not so developed. I've not seen a pure Guasare bar
> yet. Earthy and deep, somewhat similar to Ocumare. El Rey may be
> experimenting with it.

"Eddy" > wrote in message
m...
> Hello Alex:
>
> I went to the website you gave me Chocosphere or something close to
> that. I looked around and found that Valrhona has a Chuao chocolate.
> However the Chuao chocolate is Bittersweet. The recipe I have calls
> for unsweetened. Now there is a whole bunch of terms that seem to
> describe the same.
> What do all those things mean anyway?
>
> Unsweetened
> Bittersweet
> Semi-sweet
> Bitter
>
> Are these things describing the same thing or different things. I
> know what unsweetened means (that there was no sweetener added).
> Please help, everytime I decode one system, another crazy code word
> appears.
>
> Eddy
>
>
Unsweetened and bitter are pretty much the same, although the amount of
cocoa can vary. Bittersweet is a little more sweet. Semi-sweet has some more
sweetener added (usually cane sugar) than bittersweet. Milk chocolate has
milk added, and is a sweet (highly-sugared) chocolate. White chocolate
contains no cocoa, lots of sugar, and barely tastes like chocolate.