making our own couverture

[Jamal12]

Hi everyone,

when i was studying chocolate making we  were taught how to make our own couverture and our own milk, white chocolate. However now i can see in most recipes we are told to use Callebaut and so on. I have a load of Cocoa powder ate home and cocoa butter and all the other bits and pieces to make my own couverture and so on. Why do we keep getting pushed to use what ever make rather than as chocolatiers make our own. Does it  have any commercial aspect? I mean if you are using quality cocoa powder like hersey's which is highly reputed. Then why do we have to source these branded ones. Many which are not easily available where I am.

 thanks

Jamal

Edited July 15, 2018 by Smithy
Corrected title spelling (log)

[keychris]

for me? Time, lack of bench space for yet another piece of equipment and reliability. I like that I can open a bag with a specific flavour profile for what I need.

 

Are brands like hershey's highly reputable? When I think of quality couverture, Hershey's is not a name that I would have thought of, but that may be simply because I haven't used it.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Speaking only as a consumer...as much as I admire Hershey as a philanthropist, his chocolate tastes rather rancid.

 

[pastrygirl]

Why?  Because they're better.  Smoother, more consistent, in a variety of flavor profiles.  The way I see it, those European chocolate makers have been doing it for 100 years and have it pretty well figured out.  While I like to play with grinding things together, and understand having limited options, I would not expect to make anything rivaling the commercial couvertures out of Hershey's cocoa powder. 

 

Can you get Callebaut or any other brands?

 

[Avachocolate]

Not sure what you are making....but I own a Patisserie / Chocolate shop and I use chocolate powder only on some very rare occasions...mostly only for decorating and 1-2 basic recipes.

For 99.9 percent of my work I use couverture chocolate.....and Hershey's is not something I would ever consider using, even in cocoa powder....too many other options out there, but of course that depends on the availability in your market.

As @pastrygirl mentioned try to get some Callebaut....it is a good midrange brand and seems to be the most available in a large part of the world...or maybe Belcolade for something a bit cheaper and still decent.

[paulraphael]

I just visited the Chocolate Lab at ICE, for a half-hour intro to what chocolate making looks like. It's hard to imagine that this is going to become a thing for most chocolatiers. Certainly not for pastry chefs. There must have been $100,000 worth of equipment in there, and it filled a room. Beyond that, chef Laiskonis said his takeaways were that "making chocolate is easy. Making good chocolate is really hard." The other takeaway: "90% of chocolate making is janitorial."

 

It would seem the reason to take this on, besides being obsessed—in which case on one's going to stop you—is if you have a particular vision for the flavors you want, and none of the commercial makers are delivering. I don't think you'd do it just for the quality. It's doubtful you'll outdo Michel Cluizel and Amedei. 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2018 by paulraphael (log)

[Tri2Cook]

52 minutes ago, paulraphael said:

Beyond that, chef Laiskonis said his takeaways were that "making chocolate is easy. Making good chocolate is really hard."

Making good chocolate for Michael Laiskonis is probably not the easiest of tasks, making good chocolate compared to what most people know about and generally eat is less difficult. Maybe I won't outdo Cluizel or Amedei, but that doesn't mean I can't outdo Hershey and Nestle and possibly some higher up the chain than that. I'd be willing to bet all of my chocolate equipment against a bite-size Hershey bar that you won't find two people in the town I live in that have even heard of Cluizel or Amadei. Besides, it's fun. 

 

52 minutes ago, paulraphael said:

The other takeaway: "90% of chocolate making is janitorial."

At my level, 90% may be a bit high... but the point he's making is definitely valid. The prep and cleanup certainly involve more hands-on time than the production.

 

52 minutes ago, paulraphael said:

It would seem the reason to take this on, besides being obsessed

But isn't that obsession one of the best reasons of all? I ask that with thoughts of your journey with your coffee ice cream in mind. 

Edited July 15, 2018 by Tri2Cook (log)

[paulraphael]

On 7/15/2018 at 11:21 AM, Tri2Cook said:

But isn't that obsession one of the best reasons of all? 

 

 

Sure! I assume obsession is why most people would do it. Or maybe just falling for the process. It's like when people who live in major cosmopolitan cities get into making bread ... they'll have to jump through many hoops just to equal what the best local bakeries are doing for $6 a loaf. But the process becomes an end in itself.

 

If it doesn't, they've made a math mistake.

[Jamal12]

I think I have actually found out why most of these big chefs and these schools don't teach and encourage students to make their own couverture although there is  nothing wrong with this making your own . The students should be taught from scratch and not using ready made couverture that a big company has already made. Most of these big schools of pattieserie and chocolate making are sponsored by these callebaut and cacaobarry(I have nothing against these big companies) I am just asking why they don't teach the conventional way. You see on their outfits the chefs have their name and these big establishments aswell. So basically they are paid and sponsored to sell these big brands. I knew there was a commercial aspect in there because these big companies butter their bread so they are not going to teach their students to make your own couverture from scratch with cocoa butter and cocoa powder.Qnd leave out these brands. These schools use and make their clients and student use hundreds if not thousands of kilos of these major brands couverture

 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Jamal12 (log)

[Rajala]

It's not time well spent making your own chocolate. Just like most people don't make their own praliné. You buy quality products instead.

 

They probably teach the history of chocolate etc in schools. When you read books about chocolate, it's thoroughly explained how it's made, it's just that most people can't be bothered with it. Just like I don't make my own beer, because it's easier to buy it.

[keychris]

It depends what you want to do - if you want to make chocolate, do it. If you want to make pralines / bonbons / chocolates / artisan blah blah do that. There's no rule that says just because you like making beautiful pieces of chocolate art that you have to make the chocolate itself!

 

When you bake a cake, do you grind the flour from wheat? Extract the sugar from cane juice? Milk the cow yourself? It's the same question in mind, and the answer is the same - there's perfectly good products that we can use to make our lives easier!

[Tri2Cook]

1 hour ago, Rajala said:

It's not time well spent making your own chocolate.

It is time well spent making my own chocolate. I enjoy the process and I enjoy seeing how different a chocolate made exactly the same way each time using beans from different locales can be. But I agree it's not everybody's time well spent making their own. If I didn't have an interest in doing the bean to bar thing and was only doing bonbons, etc., it wouldn't be worth it to me either. I don't think I'd enjoy making chocolate by just mixing together cocoa powder, cocoa butter and sugar and I certainly don't think it would be a good idea to make that the mandatory method for pastry and chocolate schools and classes. But if, as Jamal12 has intimated is his situation, that was my only way of getting chocolate to work with... sometimes you do what you gotta do. 

[chromedome]

Really it's going to come down to the math. If the time, effort and cost involved in making his own couverture are less than the time, effort and cost of sourcing something acceptable from outside, then there's no reason for Jamal not to do so. If there's a difference in cost, but he can charge a premium for his own bean to bar product (or "bean to bon bon," as the case may be) he still comes out ahead. As long as there's profit to be made, it's not so much a question of "worth it" as "is this the most pragmatic option for me in my circumstances?"

 

I once ran an in-store bakery, and - because I could - I experimented with hand-made ham and cheese croissants. They were very good, the customers loved them, and we could charge enough for them to make a buck out of it. Unfortunately my night bakers never got the hang of proofing and baking them correctly, so they were always either under-proofed and tiny, or over-proofed and sadly deflated, or under-baked, or over-baked...with all that waste we lost money, and I dropped them.* The bottom line (and the point of that digression) is that you have to be flexible and adapt to the facts on the ground.

*If you're curious, I replaced them with a ham-and-cheese pocket made with the same commercial all-butter puff we were using for other products. They were a lot less work, and went straight from freezer to oven without proofing, so they gave us a lot more profit for a lot less effort. As good a product in the abstract? No. More practical and profitable? You betcha. And the customers liked them just fine...in fact we sold more, perhaps because we seldom actually had a full complement of the ill-fated croissants to put out.

[pastrygirl]

There's a flaw in your premise.  Combining cacao powder and cacao butter is not making chocolate from scratch, it is combining two already processed products.  Anyone wanting to avoid big chocolate companies would not enthusiastically use Hershey's.  They're big, wouldn't you say?  (and did they ever come out against child slavery?)  To me, making chocolate from scratch means starting with the whole cacao beans or at least nibs.  Which may or may not be worth it but is a good learning exercise on how chocolate is actually made.

 

It's great that you've found a way to produce confections in a place with so many limitations but you're not exactly doing bean-to-bonbon.  They don’t teach that method in schools because it’s not a traditional method.  In order to get cocoa powder, you first have to roast, crack, winnow, and grind the beans then press the cacao butter out and grind the hard cake left behind into powder. Your method is simply. putting those parts back together.  

 

Can you get beans or nibs from your friend in Africa?  Are you already using a grinder to combine things and pulverize the sugar?  Then you can really try making chocolate from scratch!  

Edited July 27, 2018 by pastrygirl (log)

[pastrygirl]

I came across a company that reminded me of this post.  They're not making couverture exactly, but they are making truffles by combining cacao powder and cacao butter with other ingredients.  They are based on an island near Seattle that is a hippie enclave, so while they could get any organic, non-gmo, ethical, vegan, soy-free etc chocolate they want, they don't.  I think combining cacao butter and powders makes it sound more like health food.  If you use cacao powder it's a super-food, but if you use chocolate that's candy and candy is poison.* Or something? I know there are "chocolate" recipes floating around paleo, raw, and other special diet forums that usually involve agave syrup and coconut oil and other "healthy" trending ingredients.  Here's their ingredients page https://www.themightytruffle.com/ingredients-c21e4

 

So yes, some people do choose not to use prepared couverture even though they could, and at least OP is not alone.

 

* I don't even like calling my products candy, it sounds cheap and for children.  Confections are high quality treats for adults.

Edited August 1, 2018 by pastrygirl (log)

[Tri2Cook]

3 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

I don't even like calling my products candy, it sounds cheap and for children.  Confections are high quality treats for adults.

I like calling my stuff candy. "Talk about your childhood wishes, you can even eat the dishes..."