Advertisement
Keep in Mind
Appears in
By Frédéric Bau and École du Grand Chocolat Valrhona
Published 2017
On the pages that follow, you’ll find all the techniques you require to work with chocolate—tempering*, coating, decorating, and more—as well as a quick refresher course on pastry basics.
Check the percentage of cocoa in your chocolate
The quantities of chocolate you need will differ according to the cocoa percentage of the chocolate you use. This is because cocoa butter (whose quantity will differ according to the cocoa percentage) acts to harden the preparation. A chocolate with 50 percent cocoa content and a chocolate with 70 percent cocoa content will give different results, particularly in terms of texture. In all the techniques we give here, we use Valrhona chocolate: Guanaja with 70 percent or 61 percent cocoa, Jivara, and Ivoire. Whenever possible, we include substitutes with different cocoa percentages.