Forum Activity for @Michael Arnovitz

Salt is a known bitterness suppressor, and is often used for this purpose. Plus it goes well with chocolate. It's the only natural ingredient I can think of that will do this. There is of course a limit to its effectiveness, so I don't know if it would be enough to mitigate the issues you're dealing with. The only other natural ingredient I can think of is sugar. Sugar does not suppress bitterness per se, but it does fairly effectively mask it. Again, there are limits.

Of course you can always resort to chemical bitterness suppressors. I'm no food scientist, but I know that these are out there. I think I read somewhere that tannic acid can do this. And there are other products (such as Benecoat) that are made for this purpose. Before using these however you'll want to think about how important it is to you to have an all-natural product. Personally I think all-natural approaches are always preferable for high-end chocolate. But if you're getting the extra caffeine into the bar using chemicals then the ship has sailed on that anyway. And if your prospective customers are buying these bars mainly to get a jolt of caffeine then a case could be made that this approach would not be as much of a negative with that segment of the market.

We are looking to develop some artisan chocolate bars with more caffeine than usual, but we have problems with bitter taste.

At the moment there are some chocolate bars on the market with 100mg Caffeine in 43gr Chocolate, all of them manage to avoid caffeines bitterness and also the chocolate taste good. (Tipically Chocolate has 9mg of caffeine in 43 grs)

Does anyone know any product that can reduce or hide this bitterness.
We appreciate any ideas.

You can win handmade artisan Scottish chocolate from The Chocolate Tree (Edinburgh) by entering here http://www.youngperspective.net/win-handmade-chocolate-with-young-perspective.html [open to UK residents only]

The best recipes I found are the Marco (Cognac & marzipan) which I think is in book 1, the coconut caramel and banana from book 2 and the blueberry from book 3. They are all beyond fantastic. FYI: I omit the sorbitol.

Other than a few food scientists, we have yet to contact any of these top chocolatiers. We do have to find out if they will be a good fit for us still (they may or may not). I will keep your referral in mind --- as always, thanks for helping out.

John:

Have you contacted Mr Wybauw? Is he available to consult? Can you afford his rates? Is he interested in helping you?

There are many consulting chef/chocolatiers who can help you in this regard. Professor Greweling is one - Drew Shotts is another. They, and the person I am thinking of, are in the US and are more likely to be available than JP is.

Mr. Gordon,

Thanks for the assistance. I'm sure that any recommendation you give will be great. My only concern is that would your consulatant be better at this project than JPW?

JPW's second book has lots of good advice about how to increase shelf life using a variety of techniques. You can use the techniques and the recipes in the book(s) as starting points.

If you are looking for a consulting chef/chocolatier, I would be happy to make an introduction to someone based in the NYC area. He isclassically trained in Spain with much practical experience (and with a great flavor sensibility and work ethic) and can help you in your recipe development.

If you are interested, please send me a PM and I will respond with the contact information after checking in with him.

:: Clay

Thanks for the input.

We have been to many food scientists all to no success. The way we see it now is that we should go to the best and just get this over with already. When we began on this journey we did not know of any of these authors and because of this we kept going to mediocre food scientists who claimed to know it all but didn't.

So far I haven't actually tested too many of the recipes and the ones I tested had not such mistakes. The mistakes were more like rather stupid text errors such as saying that something contained "x% egg whites" where it should have been "protein" (in Dutch you use the same word for egg white and protein), and some funny google-translate-like phrases. I guess it's not crucial, just annoying.

Hi,

Do those mistakes affect recipes (amounts, missing ingredients)?

Thanks.

I am familiar with the Grewling and the Wybauw books (not the Shotts book, though). I would also clearly prefer the recipes presented by Grewling (more original, more finesse...), but the 2nd volume of Wybauw's books on extending shelf life presents more principles and knowledge if it comes to changing recipes to make them last longer. If you are mostly looking into ways to extend the shelf life of your product, then this technical knowledge might be more useful.

But on the other hand: Ways to increase shelf life in confectionery follow very general principles.In most cases it comes down to reduce the free water content or adding preservatives (such as alcohol). I would guess that many different experienced chocolatiers and consultants will probably be quite familiar with those techniques, and not only the 'famous' guys from the books

Good luck!

(by the way, the Wybauw books were translated very badly. I really find all those mistakes quite annoying, but anyway...)

Mr. Gordon, thank you for the reply.

The reason I am asking these questions is because we are looking for a consultant to reformulate our recipes. Our recipes taste great, but do not have a very long shelf life and we need it to be at least 2-3 months. Since I have not tried the recipes in the book, I am looking for advice to screen out who we should contact for consulting.

My assumption is that if JPW is world-renowned and published books on extending shelf life, that he would be a great consultant. My questions then are this:

• Would Grewling or Shotts be good consultants? Is JPW better as a consultant?
• I am located in the US, so would working with somebody in the US be better because it is closer? Or is this irrelevant?
• How would you approach this problem we are having? Are we going about it the correct way?

John:

I think you are asking the wrong questions.

Are the recipes any good? Technically yes. They are, however, traditional and tend to be on the sweet side according to many. The real answer to that question is ... do you like them?

JPW is not considered one of the best chocolatiers in the world. However, he is a very good technician and an extremely good teacher. His recipes and books are a foundation, a guide; not a bible to be followed literally. You want perspective, so also get Greweling and Shotts. Compare different approaches. You will learn a lot of technique.

In the end, do you really want to be known as a Wybauw clone? Just duplicating his recipes? Go out and make them - over and over again - learn what works for you and then apply your own taste sensibilities to the technical lessons you have learned and the market you serve.

I recently picked up 3 books fromJean-Pierre Wybauw called Fine Chocolates: Great Experience (books 1, 2, and 3). I wanted to make some recipes but I don't have all the ingredients yet. In the mean time I wanted to know if anyone here has tried the recipes that he provides in these books. My questions are:

• I am really interested only in the truffles (not others).
• Are the truffle recipes any good?
• Would you say these truffle recipes are some of the best you have every tried? If yes, which are your favorite?
• IsJean-Pierre Wybauw considered the best chocolatier in the world?

I look forward to everyones input!! : )

Cool indeed. i bet any fruits are going to be very slow maturing and quite high in fat - it'd be interesting if you could get it to fruit, mature, and grab one 8-)

I think I might have found the highest altitude cacao in the world. Nobody can know for sure, but we do know that almost all cacao grows below 1,000 feet above sea level. This tree and a few others are healthy and happy at 5,448 feet (1,661 meters) above sea level. There were no pods yet but plenty of flowers. When these trees produce pods the fruit is quickly eaten by squirrels or monkeys.

saludos, brian

When you make bars can you send some test bars this way or are you selling any bar yet.

Where are you located now?

I am on the other end a consumer and work in retail and interested in either blended or plain dark single origin bars.

I live in the New York City area

I have absolutely no idea about cocoa production in Indonesia, but I am Indonesian(-Australian) and like Sebastian above, I agree that it's a tough place, chocolate technicalities aside. Do you know anyone in Indonesia?

An owner of the chocolate factory in Yogyakarta is French (look up Monggo Chocolate) and as far as I know he uses local chocolate. Another guy in Jakarta is French also (L'atelier du chocolat) but I believe he uses Swiss chocolate.

Selamat jalan (Bahasa for safe travels...)

You've picked a tough place to start, mate - almost no one in indonesia ferments their beans, and pod borer is a nightmare there. great beans can certainly be made there, however it's not part of the culture to do so, so it's a bit of a treasure hunt.

Hello everyone,

I thought Id introduce myself a bit more and hope to get some of your professional input.

Me and my partner are starting a bean-to-bar company. Just a brief background of us, Im French and Ive been a Professional Waiter in some great gourmet places in Melbourne, NZ and France and my partner, British, is a Digital Art Director and we are currently based in London. Both of us combined hope to bring a great bar to this world, with the all best intentions.

Were wanting to travel to Indonesia next year for a base to start sourcing and sampling beans in SE Asia and Oceania.

We would be grateful if anyone had any advice, ideas, experience or anything you think we should know. Or perhaps some contacts for translators would also be helpful.

Many thanks in advance, and I look forward to everyones response!

Thomas & Bo

Thanks Sebatian im on to it now:)

"Best" is one of those words that everyone likes, but means something different to everyone who hears it.

What you'll need to get your arms around is

1) Harvesting mature pods.

2) identifying removing damage/disease

3) fermenting

4) drying

and THEN you'll be able to make good chocolate. "best" for fermentation and drying above can vary a great deal, depending on what your targets are. I'm afraid it's very difficult to distill what you need to know in these areas in a few minutes on the web, but there's a great deal of info on these boards to get you started. It'd probably be a good use of time to spend a solid week reading everything here and compiling it to start.

Hi Sebastian,

Yes, I am already in the process now, im doing research on what is the best procedure. To compare to what it is we do.

Do you know of the best procedure currently out there?

Thank Sebastian for your time I appreciate it

Is it that the beans aren't of good stock, or that the post harvest handling procedures are not appropriate? My suspicion is that the beans are just fine, but the knowledge required to properly prepare them once mature is lacking. If that's the case, no change in planting material will help that i'm afraid.

I am new to the chocolate life, this is a great site! I would love help out there regarding the best approach into growing good beans in the Pacific Island. Currently we do grow beans however not good enough for the external market. What beans do you recommend? Any suggestions please. Thank you in advance for your time:)

Thanks for your reply, Terry. I'll do some trial and error.

The addition of coconut oil (76 degree melt point) to your base chocolate will improve its resistance to cracking when the finished product is re-frozen. Depending on how much coconut oil you add, it will be difficult to actually retain temper in the chocolate. As you noted, the only way to determined what is acceptable from an appearance and texture perspective is to do some trials.

Thanks for the tip, but I want to dip the bananas into my semisweet nondairy Belgian chocolate. I guess the only way to decide is to try it and see what happens.

We hand dip naked vanilla ice cream bars into E. Guittard chocolate. It's a special blend of chocolate and coconut oil. Talk to Jerry at Chocosphere. He has the ratio recipe or you can order a 55 pound pail of it already premixed. Much easier and less messy!

Is it necessary to temper the chocolate for chocolate covered frozen bananas since they are kept in the freezer anyhow after they are dipped?

Discussion over at eGullet: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/96102-chocolate-sphere-molds/

Hello, If any one know about how to use the Liquid filling spherical moulds, please share with me the procedure. I have added the pics of the mould.

Hi jessica,

I have not bought one yet, but and interested in purchasing one. Please send me a private message and provide the details.

Thank you!

David

Hi David, Have you bought one already? We have one to sell if you are interested. We just bought it recently and it is barely used. Please let me know : ) Thanks! Jessica

Hi David

We are just gearing up for a much larger production of our chocolates in the magnetic molds. We have hired a national marketing company and are beginning our wholesale division of the company. So I am going to hold off at the current time on selling the Easyfill Depositor as I'm suspecting we will finally be putting it to use.

Thanks for the nice comment on our presentations of the chocolates.

Currently, we have been purchasing our transfer sheets from Chef Rubber.

Hi Alex,

If you are interested in selling it, please send me a message and we can talk.

Thanks!

I purchased this machine about 5 years ago and have never used it. I have made several contacts to Tomric and one other about instructions on how to use it or a video, etc. Never have received a reply. So it still sits on the shelf. Plus, not quite busy enough, volume-wise, to have to put it into operation yet.

Hello,

Has anybody used the Easy Fill Depositing Machine from Tomric? Is there a vibrating table with it? Are there any issues with bubbles and trying to get them out of the ganache? Does anybody have one for sale by chance? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Here's a bit of a secret:

There's no perfect recipe. Since each cacao type is different, and each process is different - they all need to be adjusted to yield the outcome you want. And since each person has a different idea of what 'perfect' means to their palate, well, that makes it even more challenging. If you have cocoa from origin x that made 'the perfect' chocolate for you, taking that exact same recipe but substituting cocoa from origin y may result in the most awful chocolate you've ever tasted.

Not the easy answer you were looking for, i know, it's probably frustrating. But it's the truth i'm afraid. The pathway to enlightenment lies in the same answer of 'how do you get to carnegie hall? practice.' Or find someone who's already practiced and willing to taste your starting material and provide some direction.

How to create a perfect ratio of a chocolate recipe is a very tightly held secret at the top of the chocolate ladder. And usually reserved for the top MOF Chefs of the French and Belgian, Swiss, German and Italian chocolate academies.

There is a pathway for the eager but serious chocolate student, enroll in courses taught by the 'academies.' Getting to the point of learning about perfecting ratios of ingredients usually takes a pathway of Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced coursework.

Check out the Callebaut Chocolate Academies worldwide.