[aaronatthedoublef]

Sometimes the "mice" find and eat chocolate at my house too! Occasionally they've even broken into the unsweetened chocolate which no one does more than once.

The chips go faster than the bulk.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I was taught (never went to chocolate school sadly but in generic baking/cooking classes from pastry chefs friends) that chocolate is, at its essence, cocoa and cocoa butter. That's what my unsweetened chocolate it. I forget the cocoa percentage and I won't be home to check for a couple days.

Most chocolate only talks about cocoa percentage. No one thinks about cocoa butter, even when buying white chocolate which should be cocoa butter with no cocoa. If you look at what passes for most white chocolate out there it is mostly anything but cocoa butter. It's milk and sugar and vanilla and lots of other stuff.

My semi sweet is cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar, and lecithin. Bittersweet is the same ingredients in different proportions - more cocoa and less sugar.

Dairy is semi sweet plus milk which can vary itself in terms of fat and sugar content.

I use Callebaut for bulk chocolate and Guittard for chocolate chips. I cannot buy Callebaut chips except by mail-order and my favorite pastry chef of all time favors Guittard. I cannot tell the difference between Guittard and Toll House but my family likes them. When I'm not lazy I chop my bulk chocolate into chips and use it.

Of the stuff I buy Milk is usually in the mid 30s for cocoa, semi sweet in the 40s-50s, and bittersweet in 60s and up. Then there is "dark" which is anywhere from the 50s on up. I sometimes will use Bakers semi sweet and unsweetened, especially if I do not have a scale to weigh it out. I've never used their German chocolate. I like their product it's just harder to find these days. Not sure why.

I wish the same government org that gave Callebaut a hard time about ruby chocolate would put a bit of that effort behind "dark".

One more addition - pure cocoa butter from the Chocolate Man! When I lived in Seattle I ordered from him a couple of times. He was selling out of his house back then and one order was during a particularly hot summer. He came by and personally dropped of the order rather than chance it sitting on my porch in the heat. VERY nice man and very generous with his expertise.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Makes complete sense. I thought that lecithin was also for mouth feel too.

I have tasted cocoa and cocoa nibs but I've never tried cocoa butter.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Yes. My mom always swore it was easier to melt the butter and chocolate together for just that reason. It's never helped me though.

[aaronatthedoublef]

From our "just bread" discussion this is a simpler loaf.

It has a levain which is less commitment than a starter but then the levain requires 3 grams of starter. I'm not sure how important that is in a recipe that is about 2.25 kg.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Sorry. Put this in the wrong place... Moving to Adventures in steam...

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. I didn't realize it was cocoa butter that determined the quality of the chocolate. Looking at the chocolates at the grocery store now the only thing anyone seems to think about is the amount of cocoa.

I know my favorite chocolate cake recipe uses melted unsweetened and semi sweet chocolate and oil. I've used both Bakers and Callebaut successfully.

But the recipe does not call for melting the chocolate with the oil. The oil and coffee are added to the dry ingredients and then the melted chocolate is added. Butter and chocolate are often melted together because they both need to be melted. Is there an advantage to melting the chocolate in the oil?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Skeptic. I bake scones and pizza too. My family does not want to order pizza from anywhere in town now (we average one pizza place per resident in my town). SO I get it. And I used to buy Whole Foods whole wheat sandwich bread and it was reasonable. My wife is now buying this sprouted stuff that is stupid expensive. I would and do pay that much from one of the local bakeries but a mass produced loaf? Doesn't seem worth it.

BA - I use white whole wheat in my pizza crust. I make about five pounds every two weeks:

2 pounds of water
1.5 pounds KAF cake or Caputo semolina flour
1 pound KAF white whole wheat
1/4 pound Bob's flax meal
1/4 pound Bob's chickpea
~ 1 TBL SAF yeast
~ 1 TBL turbinado sugar
~ 2 tsps. Morton's kosher salt

My family loves this dough and is very resistant to any changes or experiments. Not sure if the proportions are on or not and I do this by feel but it's a start.

[aaronatthedoublef]

What are YOUR favorite whole wheat sandwich loaves? I want to try making one my kids will eat and so far I've never been successful.

Have fun at class Mike. Looking forward to reading about it.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Yup. I really started looking at no-knead when I was teaching kids to make challah. The first time I used my KA stand mixer and they all went home and asked their parents to buy one.

The next three or four times I did it I made all the dough by hand to show them it could be done. I used a bowl, a wooden spoon, and a scraper - all of their kitchens had at least two of those three.

Anything that gets people baking is good.

Here is the KAF Just Bread recipe... They bread has a levain which calls for a sourdough starter but doesn't have a link to a sourdough starter. So I'm not sure how popular this will be for novice bakers.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The no-knead trend may have contributed to using Dutch ovens. Yes people have been baking bread in pots forever. But looking at Jim Lahey's "my bread" all of his recipes require a pot or a stiff pan in the case of baguettes because the dough is too soft to hold a shape on it's own.

And it doesn't seem as if it's less work. I have to admit I've always been afraid to use a Dutch oven but maybe I'll try it with a spatula or using it cold.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Interesting. Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike. Pretty cool. Thanks for this. I want to make a steam tube!

What was the difference between starting weight and finishing weight? Was it significant? I don't usually care but when I taught challah making the finished loaf size mattered. I needed about 18.5 ounces to make a one pound loaf.

I've just started to notice the different weights before and after proofing, after second rise, and after baking and I have been curious.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Pretty amazing challah. I've made a double decker one once. It is not easy.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've used oven/microwave oven combo units before in some long term hotels but they seem to have fallen out of favor for regular microwaves these days. It worked okay. It had some kind of rack in it that worked wit the microwave.

A local appliance store used to sell them but I could never convince my wife we should replace the microwave with it.

Our current range is better than the last which had no insulation but it still throws off a lot of heat and stays hot for a while. More than once I've doublechecked to see if the I've left the oven on after pizza night where it runs at about 500 for a couple hours.

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