Chocolate, Explained, featuring Amy Guittard

Episode Transcript

Jessica: This season is brought to you by Plugra premium European style butter, made using a slow churn process. Look for Plugra wherever fine butters are sold.   

David: I think this is really a branding issue. I think white chocolate has a big branding problem in the fact that it has chocolate in the name.  

From King Arthur Baking Company, this is Things Bakers Know. I'm David Tamarkin, King Arthur's editorial director.  

Jessica: And I'm Jessica Battilana, staff editor at King Arthur Baking, and today we are diving into a topic that's a personal passion of mine, which is chocolate. 

David, I'm about to blow your mind though, because in researching for this episode, I learned how much chocolate the average American consumes each year.   

David: Okay.  

Jessica: Do you have any idea? I had no idea.  

David: I, I don't have any, this is not knowledge I just have in me. Uh, but I can guess, let's see. So what, like a Hershey's chocolate bar is what, two ounces or something? 

Three ounces? I don't know. So that's, uh, oh my gosh, now I'm doing math. It's like a pound or something. And then, so let's say someone eats one of those every week, and so I'm gonna go for, I might go for like 12 to 15 pounds.  

Jessica: Wow. You're pretty close, actually. 

Well done. You're, yeah. So you must've excelled in math. It's around 11 pounds per person, per year.  

David: Does that seem high to you?  

Jessica: I don't know. I'd never really thought about it. And the way that we tear through chocolate in our house, like I know I'm above average in this way and in this way. So above average?  

David: No, you're above average in every way. You exceed expectations, Jessica.  

Jessica: I mean, it was interesting. Thank you very much. In some meeting we had in the company, we were talking about. I think just like how, how many baking supplies people buy a year. Like how many bags of flour, how many bags of sugar? 

You know, how much chocolate. And I did realize that across the board, I am above that. I was like, that's a year's worth. Like for me that's like, oh, I know a week. It's pretty wild because when you total up, you know, an average of 11 pounds, you know, per person, and you think about what that is, it adds up to about 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate every year. 

David: That's a lot of chocolate. And actually, I would not have even imagined that we, meaning, the planet, couldn't produce that much chocolate.  

Jessica: It's a lot of chocolate.  

David: I did my own research for this episode and apparently chocolate sales peak every year, not on October 31st, like I, would be a reasonable guess. 

But on November 1st, 'cause that's when all that Halloween chocolate that we are so nostalgic for goes on sale.  

Jessica: All in all the chocolate industry generates something like $128 billion. You know, it's a major economic driver and I think there's a lot that goes into that. It's fun to talk about. And we will talk about the sort of the lighthearted side of side of chocolate. 

We'll talk about the things we like to bake with it. Our favorite chocolate recipes, tips for working with chocolate, but also, we're going a little deeper in this episode too.  

David: Yes, and I'm so glad you talked to our special guest this episode, Amy Guittard, who was just an amazing resource on chocolate, both how to eat it, how to find the best. 

So I cannot wait for that conversation. But before we get there, let's talk more about Halloween candy. I do think, and I was raised to think this, and I'm gonna tell you why in a second, that the more premium Halloween candy is chocolate. When I was a kid, like if the houses that gave you chocolate candy versus say Jolly Ranchers, or like, oh, a single lone lifesaver or something, or some sort of Andes mint that was not, even though Andes mint has chocolate, you know those were not, yeah, those were like, like the lower tier for me. My mom had a system, which I am not condoning, but we lived in a, a small Ohio town that was big on Halloween and lots of people dressed up in costumes, although some people do more with their costumes than others. 

And my mom really had strong feelings that you should go all out on Halloween, that if you're gonna come and ask for candy, that you should be in a good costume. So she kept two bowls of candy on the porch. One was full of Jolly Ranchers and one was full of like chocolate, like Snickers. And as the kid came up the driveway, she silently judged the costume and based on what she thought of it, she would either reach to the left, like you didn't do enough. You get a Jolly Rancher. Or she went to the right and got like chocolate and congratulations. Of course, nobody knew that this, right, nobody knew about the system. She kind of did it very like subtle behind. But of course I knew and I was like, oh my God.  

Jessica: Well, it's very in line with the unofficial Things Bakers Know motto, which is “We judge, but we don't listen.” So your mom and I kind of love it. I kind of love her. Like small power play.  

David: Yeah, it is kind of savage, but it did, it taught me from a very early age that chocolate is the premium.  

Jessica: I mean, I love so many things about chocolate, but there is this sort of like, there is this amazing versatility to chocolate. You know, there's everything from cocoa powder to cacao nibs, bittersweet chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, milk chocolate. 

White chocolate, which is not really chocolate at all. Chocolate is a spectacular ingredient.  

David: Yeah, but it's actually not always that easy to bake with. Like I say, there were some challenges specific to baking with chocolate. There's some trickiness that we're gonna get into in our calls later.  

Jessica: I, do you have a favorite chocolate recipe? 

David: I think a couple years ago, if you had asked me that, I would've given you something sort of complex like a death by chocolate situation. You know, something that has a lot of components. I'm just like really in a simplicity phase in my life. And I just want a chocolate tart. 

I just think there is very little that can compete with a beautiful chocolate tart, really nicely well baked butter crust, tart crust, chocolate ganache, maybe a very thin layer of caramel at the bottom.  

Jessica: Well, and it really highlights the quality of the chocolate, right? If you buy good quality chocolate and you're spending your money on that, like it's nice to be able to really taste that because you know, as Amy talks about later in the podcast, like there is a lot of flavor variation, not only from brand to brand, but from type to type and season to season, which is really interesting. So it is nice to have a recipe where it's just, you know, showcases it. Yeah. But you know, well, I really, really, really like chocolate. You know, I'm just like one step away from getting one of those sweatshirts, you know, that has like the cursive script that says like, chocolate doesn't ask silly questions, chocolate understands, or something like that. I do love chocolate mousse. We have a great, very simple chocolate mousse recipe on the site. 

I made that. The last time I made that, I think I did, I followed our recipe, but inspired by something I saw in Bon Appetit, I, I just made like a giant party bowl. It was New Year's Eve and I made just an absolute vat of chocolate mousse and I brought it to this party with freshly whipped cream, those luxardo cherries, some good olive oil for drizzling and some flaky salt, and set up like a little chocolate mousse bar. 

And let me just tell you, people lost their minds. I mean, for like it, it was one of those, you know, low labor, high reward recipes, I think.  

David: I love that you call that low labor. For a lot of our listeners, a lot of our listeners, I think mousse is intimidating. Although you're right, it's not that hard. And they can do it.  

Jessica: They can do it. And the nice thing about the recipe that our test kitchen director Sarah developed is that it, you know, a lot of them are sort of fussier with like beaten egg whites, things like this. This is a very streamlined, very doable. You don't have to worry about like, am I going to eat raw eggs, like what's gonna, is my chocolate gonna get all chippy and weird?  

David: So it's a whipped, so you're folding whipped cream into a base of, of chocolate base of the ganache.  

Jessica: Yes, exactly. Not a ganache, but yeah, just a, a melted chocolate base. And it is, yeah, a delight. Just a delight. I, but I also, I mean, I, I like the sort of creamy chocolate things. 

Like I make chocolate pudding a lot. I use Liz Prueitt's recipe from the first Tartine book, which I think is an unimpeachable recipe, and she introduced me to a very hot tip for pudding making. That was a sentence I've never said before, but after you make this pudding, she advises that you blend it using an immersion blender for a full five minutes. 

Oh, wow. And I do what Liz says because she is a fantastic pastry chef, and it is so like light and silky and beautiful. So, and that also not too hard to make. And then, you know, like a brownie, hard to go wrong with a brownie.  

David: It's very hard.  

Jessica: Um, well, I mean, there's so many things. Again, as usual, I feel like we could be talking forever. 

I wanna make sure that we save time to hear this conversation that I had with Amy Guittard. So years ago when I was still living in San Francisco, Amy invited me to take a tour of her family's chocolate company Guittard, which I think makes some of the world's best chocolate and has been based in the Bay Area since the eighteen hundreds. 

It was so cool. It's not open to the public, so it felt like a very VIP experience. I got to see how chocolate chips were made. I got to see how cocoa powder was made, and I got to learn about every step of the chocolate making process. Totally fascinating, and as a chocolate lover like myself, very illuminating. 

It's run by her father Gary Guittard. She works there with her brother, Jesse, so it is still a family run business, and she's just an absolute font of knowledge and I was so glad that she took the time to chat with us. 

So I was saying that before we came on to record this episode, I did what I do most afternoons around two or three o'clock, which is go to my pantry, root around in a bag of Guittard wafers, pull out a handful. Sometimes I dip them in peanut butter and then carry on with the rest of my afternoon. 

So thank you for that. Welcome. Thank you for sponsoring my afternoon snack.  

Amy: You're so welcome. I call that chocolate hour, although here my chocolate hour is like 10:00 AM and then maybe at like one and then another one at three. Also, almond butter. Side note, almond butter. A date and like a little bit of chocolate is also delicious. 

Jessica: Yeah, that sounds, lemme try. Very good. That's an upgrade. So the company Guittard was founded by your great, great, great grandfather and he came to the United States to San Francisco from France. And he was in search of gold. But ended up making chocolate. Which is kind of like maybe more valuable to me than gold. 

I don't know. I mean, I know gold futures are going up every day, but.  

Amy: Yeah, so he brought chocolate to trade for mining supplies. So when he got to San Francisco, he realized that the merchants selling goods to all the gold miners were doing pretty darn well. And so, um, he went back to France. His uncle had a chocolate factory. 

Actually, my family history in France, um, was of stone masonry and chocolate making is a grinding business, more or less so, um, over the course of making chocolate, you're refining the particle size over and over again. You know, after you roast your beans, you're gonna mill them. Um, and then you're gonna refine them and all those processes, even thereafter is a, is a process of, uh, making the chocolate finer and finer and creating flavor. And, um, and so the history of stone masonry sort of aligned really nicely with chocolate making. So his uncle had, um, a chocolate factory in France. He learned how to make chocolate from his uncle and brought that machinery back to San Francisco, which is like, I, it still baffles me that he came here and then went back to Europe and then came back to San Francisco. 

Um. Again, at the time you couldn't subsist on making and selling one thing. So chocolate was one item that we made and sold, but we also sold coffees, teas, and spices. So anything that you could grind basically. 

Jessica: I mean, we could spend hours and hours talking about this, but can you give me the nickel version of how chocolate is made? 

Okay, so from like bean to bar. 

Amy: I mean, sure. I'll try to do it in like record time. So cocoa grows 10 to 15 degrees, more or less, either side of the equator. We partner with a lot of farmers to make sure that they are cultivating, fermenting, drying properly to get the most flavor out of those beans. 

And that partnership is really important because the flavor starts at the farm. So when you harvest a cocoa pod, uh, you take the pod, you open the pod, there's seeds inside, there's a pulp around the seed, and that's what's used in the fermentation, which is a, a really important flavor development process. 

And so you take the seeds out of the pod. Um, different countries, uh, will ferment different ways. There's cascading boxes, so there's typically three boxes, and you ferment them over a period of time. They'll start in one box, you open it up. You aerate the box. This, the, the beans sort of like fold in on themselves. 

They typically have banana leaves on top to keep the heat, um, inside to help with the fermentation. And so that's one way of doing it. Then once it's fermented, they need to get dried. Solar drying is the best way. Some people do artificial drying, but artificial drying can, you know much like when you have your chocolate bar in a pantry, if it's not stored properly, if it's, if the bag is left open or a bar is left exposed, it'll start to take on the smell of your pantry. Which is why chocolate storage is so important. Similarly, the, the beans will take up any flavor that is around them. So sometimes you'll see beans being, um, dried on the ground and some, and that can impart an, an off flavor. 

Um, and so it's really important to try to dry the beans on a raised drying mat, oftentimes in the sun, the weather might be not be as cooperative. Some countries will have to dry near fire, which will sometimes impart a smoky flavor, which is not good. So there's again, all these things that, um, are really, really important for flavor development, um, even before we get the beans. 

Jessica: Yeah, I mean, and I think we, we can kind of forget when we're eating a candy bar or chocolate bar that it is an agricultural product, right? And that it is variable in that way. Like it's variable to weather, it's variable to all of these, you know, sort of decisions, big and small along the process of harvesting, fermenting. 

Amy: Absolutely. It's a really important thing to remember, you know, that transformation that goes from bean to bar, we kind of colloquially referenced that, um, you know, bean to bar really is a, a reminder that it is an agricultural product like coffee beans. 

Jessica: And then you get these fermented dried cocoa beans sent to you in the states, at which point you then roast, grind, sweeten, process, et cetera. There you go. See how fast I made that. We spent 45 minutes talking about fermentation. Yeah. And the rest can be condensed in, um, no, but I think your, you know, your description of the, sort of like the idea of the stone mason, the stone milling is really interesting because you sort of get, and I saw it in the factory, like you see it go from this sort of like chunky matrix to something that becomes smoother and smoother and smoother.   

Amy: In the process of making chocolate, once you grind your nibs or your cocoa beans, cacao is more or less 50% fat and 50% mass. When you grind peanuts, you get peanut butter. When you grind cocoa beans or nibs, you get unsweetened chocolate, which is the base of a lot of recipes, and that is mass and fat. 

If you take that unsweetened chocolate or chocolate liquor and put it in a cocoa press, that's how you get cocoa powder.  

Jessica: Can you tell our listeners, I think one of the questions that, you know, beginner bakers or even maybe more seasoned bakers have is like, they, they see that percentage on the bags. 

I mean, people come to us and they, they see the percentage on our flour bags, and they're like, what does that mean? Obviously the percentage on a flour bag means something very different from what it means on a bag of chips or wafers or bars, so what, when we see 64%, 72%, what does that number refer to? 

Amy: Yeah, so that is the percent cacao, which is, it is mass and butter. And so I think it's important. A lot of people say, well, a higher percentage means it's more intense. That could be true. It might, you know, you could have, you could have a 70% cacao that has no added cocoa butter in it, that's gonna taste pretty intense. 

You could also have a 70% cacao that has 65% mass and 5% added butter. That's gonna taste less intense than a 70%. You could have an 80%. That is 10% added butter and a 70% mass. And that's gonna taste, you know, so the, the level of intensity adjusts based on the amount of cocoa butter.  

Jessica: I wanna talk just for a second about like, is what is it that separates like truly sort of cheap chocolate from more high quality chocolate. Is it the amount of cocoa mass? Is it the quality of the ingredients? Is it all of those things?  

Amy: So I think you raise a really important point about good chocolate. And I think to go back to what you were saying earlier, I always encourage people to taste. 

I think, you know, a couple things. Grind is really important. Grind is sort of the mouthfeel. Um, it's particle size, and so something that is smoother. I think that's a really easy litmus for someone to pick up on. That indicates sort of a longer, slower process, if you will. It also, you know, I mentioned earlier, chocolate is a, is a grinding business and it's flavor development. 

Um, you know, when you have, um, smaller particles, the cocoa butter is coating, you know, more surface area. So, you know, I think that there's a lot that goes into particle size and particle size distribution. It also affects performance and how something will, will flow, particularly if you're coating something. 

Jessica: I think the thing that's on a lot of people's minds right now is the price of chocolate, because the price of chocolate and of cocoa has gone up, and so chocolate prices have gone up for, I think for everyone. And why is that? Is that like a climate thing? Is it a crop failure thing? Is it tariffs? Is it something else entirely?  

Amy: It is all of the above, but I can circle back to that. Um, so the cocoa market has sort of shot through the roof. A little over a year ago, cocoa was being traded at like more or less $3,000 a metric ton. Now it's at like $8,000 a metric ton. So most of the raw materials themselves are increasing, mostly due to shortages that have resulted from climate change, climate change being wetter environments that create a really lovely breeding ground for diseases that impacted the crop. And cocoa has two primary seasons. There's main crop and mid crop. So we're kind of always waiting to see sort of what the results will be from each of those periods to see if there's any indication of some improvement. And so what you're seeing now in terms of the rising costs, we're seeing rising costs cross all facets of our lifeing, right? 

And so with cocoa, there's not just the rising costs that we see day to day, but it's also a real tangible impact based on the shortages that we're seeing in the market.  

Jessica: And I will say, you know, I, as somebody that does all the grocery shopping in my house, and also is a, is a huge chocolate consumer, like I know, you know, it's noticeable, right? Like a bag of chocolate chips that was one $6 is now $9.  

Amy: And one of those things that like we struggle with, which is the reality of cocoa farmers. Like we, we pay a premium for our, you know, our cocoa beans, flavor beans and all that stuff. And the reality is there should be an increase in price. Cocoa farmers don't make enough money for the material that they're cultivating and the time and the effort, and it's sort of course correcting something that has been long discussed and the need for a higher price for this raw material. Like what can we do to help communicate that? 

Jessica: I feel like we've only scratched the surface, but we have. But it's so lovely to see you. And thank you for all this information, Amy Guittard, we appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming on Things Bakers Know and telling us what you know.  

Amy: We appreciate you. We love King Arthur. 

David: This episode is brought to you by all the chocolate that we sell on kingarthurbaking.com. Obviously, King Arthur is known for flour, but we also sell all kinds of baking ingredients, and I think our chocolate and cocoa selection is secretly one of the best things we offer. We have everything you need from milk to semi-sweet to bittersweet chocolate, all from top chocolate makers like Callebaut, Guittard.  

Jessica: I love all of our chocolate. 

I also love our huge selection of cocoa, and one personal favorite is our black cocoa, which imparts this ultra dark, deep chocolate flavor and truly inky dark chocolate color that simply can't be replicated. It is the ingredient you need if you wanna make your own version of the famous chocolate sandwich cookies at home. 

David: Find it and all of our chocolate and cocoa powder at kingarthurbaking.com 

It's time for our next segment, Ask the Bakers. For Ask the Bakers, we want to hear from you. If you have a baking question for us, head to kingarthurbaking.com/podcast to record a voice message, and we may end up using it on the show. That's Kingarthurbaking.com/podcast.  

Jessica: If you have a baking question that simply cannot wait, you can always reach out to our Baker's Hotline via phone, email, or online chat. 

Just go to kingarthurbaking.com/bakers-hotline. That's Kingarthurbaking.com/bakers-hotline or call us (855) 371-2253. That's 2 2 5 3 as in BAKE. Let's hear our questions.  

Caller: I have to buy more cocoa powder. And notice there's three different types that King Arthur sells. Can you explain to me how they're different and how to choose one over the other? 

Thank you.  

Jessica: Oh, this is a great question and you know, it's tricky. It's really tricky. And a few years ago we had legendary pastry chef Alice Medrich write a whole blog for us explaining the different types of cocoa and how they're used. And she is, was a, is a fabulous resource for all things chocolate and so. 

We actually sell more than three different types of cocoa powder. But for the purpose of answering this question in a relatively concise way for a change, let's see, let's see if you can do it. I think we're gonna focus on the three main types of cocoa, which are natural cocoa, dutch processed cocoa, and black cocoa. 

So if you leave it like that in its untreated form, you have natural cocoa. And natural cocoa tends to be fruitier in flavor than Dutch processed cocoa, and often a little lighter in color. Now, Dutch process cocoa powder is cocoa powder that has been alkalized, so it gets treated with potassium carbonate, which reduces the acidity in the cocoa and it deepens the color of the cocoa. It sometimes turns it almost a reddish color. And I would say flavor wise, to me, it has a deeper chocolate flavor. I think it's less sort of fruitier than natural cocoa powder and it's important. You know, some recipes will specify Dutch processed cocoa. Some will specify natural cocoa. 

Some will say you can use either. And what's important to know here is that any cake, cookie or baked good that's leavened only with baking soda or a combination of soda and powder where baking soda is predominant requires you to use natural cocoa powder because otherwise your baked good will not rise properly. 

But recipes that require you to use Dutch processed cocoa to rise well, also to taste good, are recipes that only use baking powder as their leavener. So if it's a recipe that calls for baking powder and cocoa, you wanna use a Dutch processed cocoa. If it's a recipe that is leavened mostly with baking soda, you wanna use a natural cocoa. 

And the recipe should, you know, should specify if it matters. Some recipes, it doesn't matter, but if it does for rise, like, gosh, I hope that the recipe developer has told you which one to use. And then the third, and I would say perhaps slightly fringier cocoa because you don't see it everywhere. I think it's something you get, you know, at specialty shops, we sell it online, is black cocoa. 

So black cocoa has been alkalized later in the processing and treated with a higher dose of the potassium carbonate, and it turns the cocoa like truly inky black color, and it gives you that flavor, which I feel like is best described as the Oreo cookie flavor. And black cocoa will work with either baking soda or baking powder. 

David: I love having black cocoa in my pantry. I think it's such a fun ingredient to work with. I wouldn't throw it into, you know, recipes that don't necessarily call for it. One, just because it's gonna, it's gonna make it intense. Make the baked goods very dark in color. Yeah. Sometimes it can look a little off putting, but I love working with recipes that do call for it 'cause it's just so fun and it is a completely different flavor. 

Jessica: Yeah. So I hope that helps and, you know, stock up because it's definitely cocoa season. Uh, let's listen to our next question.  

Caller: Hey, King Arthur. How do I get a shiny crackly crust on top of my brownies? Like a box mix.  

David: This is a question that so many people have. Mm-hmm. And we have written a lot about this. 

Mm-hmm. On our blog, and in fact, one author in particular, PJ Hamel, has gone really deep and we do have a few tips. I'm gonna give you a little bit of science. Don't ask me too much 'cause I don't fully understand it. But basically, it's, this is about melting the sugar, and because that crackly top is sugar that has during the baking process migrated to the top of the brownies. Mm-hmm. And crystallized there to form a shiny sheen. Yeah. So what you wanna do is dissolve that sugar and even melt it because melting the sugar, dissolving the sugar helps it migrate to the top, you know? Okay. Helps separate it from the other ingredients and get it to the top. Some brownie recipes have you heat the butter and the sugar on the stove top. 

Mm-hmm. And even bring it to a like a simmer or little boil and that really dissolves the sugar and gets it going. And I find that recipes that include that step always give you that shiny top, crackly top. I like that. And that also kind gives you a chewier brownie too, 'cause it's dissolving some of the water. 

You could try incorporating that step into your favorite brownie recipe, I guess, and you could see what happens. But probably safer to find a recipe, which we will leave a few in the show notes that involve that step.  

Jessica: Those are great too. 'cause often those are like a one bowl situation, you know, they have you melting the sugar and the butter and then just like adding everything else to it.  

David: Oh, yeah. Right. You just throw it all in the skillet. Yeah, that's a good point. There's one other thing though. There's sort of a very simple step really incorporated into any brownie recipe that PJ discovered adding chocolate chips. Now, not everybody is a chocolate chip in brownie person. 

However, PJ found that when you throw chocolate chips into the batter at the end and then bake that brownie that almost always gives you that shiny top, so that's, that's a tip you can use in almost any brownie recipe. She's tested it so much and it always works, but she has a theory. 

Mm-hmm. Her theory is that when you throw some chocolate chips into the batter at the last minute, it just introduces just that much more additional sugar to the recipe. Mm-hmm. Which then, you know, dissolves, floats to the top of the question. She basically, she's saying it's just that little, add a bit of sugar that helps the crust form. 

Jessica: Yeah. I buy what PJ's selling and I never mind a, a brownie with chocolate chips added. So for me it's a win-win, crackly, top and extra chocolate. Yeah. Okay. Now I just feel like what I need to do when we finish recording this is go make some brownies.  

David: Yeah. What we really need to do is go plan our brownie episode. 

Jessica: Yeah, we should. Kind of crazy that we have not done that yet. Yeah. Season three brownies. I can't wait. Let's hear our next question.  

Caller: My friend was telling me that they tempered their chocolate and I admittedly didn't know what that meant. So what does it mean to temper chocolate and should I be doing it?  

David: I will say that I have tempered chocolate before. 

I do find it quite tricky. I know there were more advanced ways to do it and that there were simpler ways, that there were some tricks.  

Jessica: Well, I think what we could say is I feel confident answering that second part, like should I be doing it? Um, so tempering chocolate is a way to ensure that your chocolate stays shiny and snappy once it sets. So you melt your chocolate using a very specific protocol, which is, I don't want to talk about, I'm gonna call, I'm gonna phone a friend on this one. But the reason is like, say you were covering a truffle or something like that and you wanted like that chocolate shop quality finish where it stays really shiny, it stays really snappy, it doesn't bloom. 

Then you would want to temper your chocolate and it is a little bit fussy.  

David: Yeah, I think, I'm glad you're answering the question. Should I be doing it? Because I would argue that if you are doing something like dipping cookies in the chocolate, you could temper that chocolate and it could be like really beautiful. 

And maybe your recipe calls for that, but you can also get away with just dipping it into melted chocolate and letting it set. And it will not be as beautiful. It will not be as snappy, but it will set. And for me it's gonna be good enough.  

Jessica: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I've lived my whole life never tempering chocolate. At least never tempering chocolate for recreation.  

Um, so. I felt like I should reach out to somebody in the company that had some more expertise. So our colleague, Melanie Wanders, used to actually own a chocolate company outside of Washington, DC with her husband Wilhelm, who also is a King Arthur employee owner. 

And I knew that Mel would be the right person to answer this question thoroughly and accurately because she has so much chocolate experience. So we use the phone a friend option as we often do, and uh, Melanie Wanders, who works now in our R & D department, came to our aid.  

Mel: Hi, baking friends. It's Mel from the Research and Development team here at King Arthur. 

Tempering chocolate is the process of melting the chocolate to a certain temperature, cooling it to a certain temperature with some agitation or stirring in between. Then holding it at that temperature to dip baked goods or dried fruit, or to enrobe or coat chocolate truffles and candies. Without jumping too far off the science deep end, here's what's happening. When we temper chocolate, as we just learned, real chocolate contains cocoa butter. This cocoa butter is made up of beta crystals that set our harden at different temperatures to ensure our chocolate stays shiny and snappy. Once it sets, we have to melt all of those crystals first, then slowly cool the chocolate down while stirring to start setting some, but not all of those crystals. 

Once we've dipped or coated our items in chocolate, we allow them to set at room temperature for three to five minutes for those remaining beta crystals to set. And what we're left with is a beautifully glossy chocolate dipped item that has a snappy break when you bite into it and stays solid at room temperature. 

While tempering can seem intimidating, just think of it as a temperature game. You're going to melt the chocolate to a certain temperature, then cool it to a certain temperature, and then keep it at that certain temperature while you work with the chocolate. That temperature varies based on the type of chocolate you're using. 

For dark chocolate, you'll melt it to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, cool it to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and maintain it at a temperature of 86 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit while you work with it. For milk or white chocolate, you'll melt the chocolate to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool it to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and then hold it at a working temperature between 84 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. 

As with anything, practice always makes better. Be patient and kind with yourself. It took me years to feel confident tempering chocolate and in the end, even out of temper chocolate that is streaky and less snappy, still tastes great so you can eat the mistakes and no one will ever know.  

Jessica: Well I never like to be patient or kind with myself, but I think Mel's advice is sound,  

David: She does know what she's doing.  

Jessica: She does know what she's doing. And I think, I mean truly, this is something that all bakers can kind of take to heart. Like you're not, you may not nail it the first time, but you know, with practice, your skills improve and you can eat the mistakes.  

David: Exactly. The worst that can happen is that you end up with semi tempered chocolate. 

Yeah, but you just eat, you just eat it. 

Every episode, we like to check in with Jessica to see what wildly surprising and full throated ideas are in her head. A segment we lovingly call Jess-opinions. Jessica, what is your chocolate Jess-opinion? 

Jessica: I hate white chocolate. I think it's disgusting. Thanks for listening.  

David: You can please write a review. 

Okay. Okay. You're not the only one who thinks this, but I need you to go a little deeper. Explain why.  

Jessica: Well, okay, so. White chocolate. For listeners who don't know about the processing, it is cocoa butter, sugar, milk, solids, but there's no, no, none of the part of the cacao that I think actually gives chocolate its personality, that gives it, its like dynamic and interesting flavor. To me, white chocolate is just like one note sweetness and I think lesser quality white chocolate is sort of both flavorless and unpleasantly greasy. Like the mouthfeel of it when it melts is not to my taste. And even, you know, I think by law I say as though I know all the laws of chocolate has to have 20% cocoa butter at minimum. And I think there's a lot of outfits out there that are just like greasing in on the minimum, you know?   

David: Which then makes you wonder what is the rest?  

Jessica: Yeah. Well the rest is sugar. Is sugar and milk, right? Yeah. And so I just don't think it's very interesting. And I know you can caramelize your white chocolate. I know you can pair it with macadamia nuts. I just always think when I eat white chocolate, would this be better if it were milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, and my answer is always yes. Hmm. There's nothing that white chocolate can do that dark chocolate. Or milk chocolate cannot do better there. 

David: I think this is really a branding issue. I think white chocolate has a big branding problem in the fact that it has chocolate in the name, but if that's called something else, I don't think people would have such a problem with it. It's the expectations that we bring to anything that has the word chocolate in it that makes white chocolate seem to fall short. 

But I don't mind white chocolate. I know this is not my segment to tell my opinion, but I just gotta count of you for a second. If it weren't called, if it were called something like, um. 

Jessica: Oh, I love the, I love your rebranding here. I can't wait to hear what you come up with. 

David: Yeah, I mean, butter bits, cocoa butter bits. 

Jessica: Butter bits is not actually, you know what? I will say I have had white chocolate all across the quality spectrum. You know, everything from like drugstore white chocolate to premium brand white chocolate. Obviously there is a difference between those.  

David: If you've eaten those just out of pure hate, you're like, I hate this, this so much. I gotta try it.  

Jessica: Well, you know. People's tastes change all the time. Right? Like maybe I'm gonna have an evolution. Yeah. And obviously, you know, there is a big difference between cheap white chocolate and more premium white chocolate. But I think really the flavor that it's bringing is, especially when you get to the higher quality ones, is vanilla. It's like a milky vanilla. So maybe it's milky vanilla bars, I don't know. But I think that is sort of like the vanilla chips. 

David: Or vanilla, yeah, vanilla, milky vanilla bars.  

Jessica: I mean, we'll, chocolate  

David: Listeners, let us know, would you buy milky vanilla bars?  

Jessica: And I am not here to like yuck anyone else's yum. But you know, you ask for my opinion.  

David: Well, let's go from yuck to yum. What are you baking this week?  

Jessica: So this week I am going savory, and I'm gonna make, I started a little too soon. I'm gonna admit, like it got a tiny bit cold out and yes, I, I went hard, like soup, ribollita.   

David: My God, me too. 

Jessica: So I've been making a lot of soups and now it feels appropriate, but the way to upgrade any soup, even like a canned soup is our jalapeno cheddar pull apart bread. Woo. This recipe developed by our colleague Martin Philip, so good. It's just like packed with cheddar, packed with jalapenos. It's not hard to shape and it just gives you this like beautiful bronzed loaf, kind of a tear and share situation. And you know, sometimes I, sometimes I buy the soup and make the bread. 

Sometimes I make the soup and buy the bread, but I feel like this bread's like a real upgrade on soup dinner. Yes. So that's what I'm gonna bake.  

David: It's delicious. I love that bread. Yeah. Yeah.  

Jessica: What are you gonna bake?  

David: Well, I'm also in like, sort of hardy carby cheesy space. Just like you. And I am going to try finally the fugazzeta on our site, which is um, a recipe that David DT Turner in our test kitchen developed. It's an Argentinian style, it's basically pizza, but it's a stuffed crust and it has all the cheese is sort of like stuffed in between two layers of crust. And there's just a pile of cooked onions on top. And I love, yeah, I just love cooked onions, so I just, it's kind of like, it's giving me French onion soup in pizza form. 

Jessica: Yeah, I love that.  

David: Which actually the recipe we have in the pizza book coming out. Yeah. A true French onion pizza. So this is sort of a, a different take on that. And I'm just sort of fascinated by Argentinian pizza. 'cause you know, there are so many Italians that migrated that, that immigrated to Argentina a while ago. 

And now Argentina has this like very distinctive style of pizza. And this is one example of it that I'm interested to try.  

Jessica: So sounds like we should go on a field trip to learn more. 

First we'll go to chocolate school, then we'll go to Argentine Pizza and mortadella, you know, mortadella school? 

David: Yeah. Okay. I'm writing the email to our boss Bill right now.  

Jessica: All caps. People love that. Um, thanks as ever for tuning in and joining us here on Things Bakers Know.  

David: Remember to like and subscribe on Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Jessica: And leave us a review while you're there or share this episode with a friend. 

David: And in the meantime, people don't forget. Follow the recipe. Things Bakers Know is hosted and executive produced by me, David Tamarkin.  

Jessica: And me, Jessica Battilana. 

David: Rossi Anastopoulo is our senior producer. Chad Chenail is our producer, and Marcus Bagala is our engineer. Original music by Megan and Marcus Bagala.  

Jessica: This episode featured Amy Guittard, Chief Marketing Officer at Guittard Chocolate, and the great, great, great granddaughter of Guittard’s founder. 

You can learn more at Guittard G-U-I-T-T-A-R-D.com.  

David: Things Bakers Know is a King Arthur Baking Company podcast.