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16 February 2017

TEMPERATURE THEORY


 

There are no rules for eating chocolate, but like most things there is a better way.

 

Good chocolate is powerful stuff - it was considered a spiritual medicine for the Maya, who, thank you, brilliantly started this whole chocolate craze. When you know how to properly taste chocolate, you’ll find amazing flavors and textures that you’ve never experienced.

 

 

Mayan Goddess Ixcacao. Goddess of Chocolate.

 

 

But to understand how to best experience your chocolate, you need to understand what is there to experience in the first place. 
 
Every step of the chocolate making process has an impact on the final flavor, and this is specially true in the case of Claudio Corallo's chocolate. Our chocolate making philosophy includes two principles:
 
 
1. Grinding, but not too much

 

Since our chocolate is a result of basic processing of the best cocoa beans from Terreiro Velho, we grind and work the beans as little as possible to conserve all its qualities.
 
When a cocoa bean is ground the resulting granulometry of the cocoa is finer. The more you grind it the more it is exposed to air and the bean starts releasing its aromas. There is a breaking point, however - and you can see it in our graph below - where the flavor & aroma curve inverts, translating into a loss of smell, flavor and freshness.
 
 

The inverted parabola is pretty self-explanatory, even if you're not a math genius.

 

 

We grind, but just enough. Our grain size is just about the perfect size. 

 
 

2. No chemistry, just physics

 

We don't use lecticin or other emulsifiers at all. 

 

Emulsions are crucial to the consistency of a huge number of foodstuffs. 

 

An emulsion is mixture of two liquids that would not normally mix. They are typically milky in appearance. A classic example of an emulsion is oil and water when mixed slowly under vigorous stirring. However, when the agitation is stopped, the two liquids separate and the emulsion breaks down. This is an example of an unstable emulsion.

 

Stable emulsions can be formed from two immiscible liquids when an emulsifier is used. Such emulsions do not separate out after a change in conditions like temperature or over time. But we want to make a pure chocolate, conserving the original flavor of the cacao beans... so we stay away from that.

 

 

How to unleash the flavor?

 

So while we're making sure all you get is the purest form of chocolate, the fact that no chemicals are used means that low temperatures harden the chocolate's consistency and inhibit a huge part of its flavors - flavors we made sure to bring from the plantation to you! 

 

That's why the sensation and the taste of the same chocolate are completely different if tasted at 20ºC or 28ºC:

 

Amount of flavors you can taste with respect to the chocolate's temperature.

 

 

When our chocolate is eaten cold, you taste only about 40% of its potential flavors - which is truly a waste.

 

It’s as simple as this… Warm the chocolate

 

At the right temperature, when the chocolate is broken it remains soft, doesn't get dry and brittle. 

 

For those fond of biting the chocolate, warm it first. Let it be your mantra. Put the sealed package in a pocket close to your body for some minutes or simply melt the chocolate in your mouth. Make it part of the experience, bond with your chocolate. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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