Chocolatier Ray Bitzel Shares His Top 10 Baking Tips

MAKE SURE YOU’RE PICKING THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS

“This is so important,” Bitzel says. “Hershey, Mars, Godiva, Lindt—at least the Lindt chocolate made in the U.S.—all those companies, what they’re selling isn’t actually real chocolate. To be considered real, chocolate must have a minimum of 20% cocoa butter. The reason these chocolates are so inexpensive is because they press out the cocoa butter. You might have 3% cocoa butter in one of those chocolate bars. They put in hydrogenated oils and palm oils and other fillers that are significantly less expensive.

“At Bitzel’s, we use chocolate couverture,” he continues. “With couverture, you know you have the right thing. It’s a quality product. Callebaut and Valrhona are the two main brands making real chocolate that customers can get at places like Whole Foods. That’s what you want.”

DON’T USE BAKING CHOCOLATE CHIPS

“A lot of people like to use baking chocolate chips when making chocolate chip cookies,” he says. “They want to see the chocolate chips on top of the chocolate. But we prefer not to do it that way. We use real chocolate couverture chips because the couverture melts. So when you bite into it, you have all these beautiful layers of chocolate and cookie dough. Plus, the baking chips aren’t really chocolate; they have a lot of hydrogenated oils and palm oils. The way we do it not only tastes better, but it’s healthier, too.”

DON’T USE WATER-BASED FLAVORINGS

“When it comes to chocolate and pastry, water is your enemy. The water will destroy the texture of what you’re making. It also affects the shelf life of confections. The oxygen in water is a huge issue. That’s why we use oil-based flavorings. These are heavy-duty essences that give a massive punch of flavor. Lorann is one brand available in any professional baking store.”

TRY A FRUIT PUREE

“I like to use fruit purees. Most of our fruit purees are predominantly water, so we cook them down into a reduction. This also intensifies the flavor. When you do this, don’t do a rapid boil. Do it at a low simmer. If you get it too hot, you’re cooking out half the flavor. Plus, when you use purees, you get all the pulp, seeds and essences of the fruit, and your end product will have some of this in it. People can be put off when they hear that but trust me. The flavor that it adds is monumental.”

THE RIGHT WAY TO ROAST CACAO BEANS

“When making chocolate at home and roasting beans, don’t just throw them in the oven in a single layer on a cookie sheet,” Bitzel says. “It doesn’t roast them evenly. The beans on the outside get burnt, and the ones on the inside don’t get roasted.”

“Put them in a bowl,” he continues. “Wrap them up with foil and do a slow roast at 250 degrees for 18 to 22 minutes. Slow-and-low is the best way to do roasting at home. They might still be a little under-roasted, but you’ll still have some good notes. That’s way better than over-roasted beans.”

WITH LIQUEURS, THE MORE ALCOHOL, THE BETTER

“If you’re using liqueurs, pay attention to the percentage of alcohol. If it’s a 25% alcohol by volume liqueur, the other 75% is water. Ideally, you want something that is 75% alcohol—an absolute minimum of 50%, but ideally 75% and above. That’s what gives you a punch of flavor. Plus, alcohol helps with the shelf life. It’s a natural preservative. People ask me all the time, ‘Something with that much alcohol in it, will it come out tasting like alcohol?’ Well, no. You wouldn’t want to drink it outright, but it doesn’t taste like alcohol.”

BE CAREFUL WHEN MIXING INGREDIENTS

“When you’re making a ganache, or if you’re just mixing something, you have to be careful not to separate it,” Bitzel says. “Some people just throw in a lump of butter and chocolate and whipping cream and start stirring it. When you do that, all the fat starts to separate. Your layers and textures will be horrible. Instead, temper the fatty ingredients like butter and chocolate. Tempering is when you combine two ingredients with wildly different temperatures. Slowly combine them so they eventually reach the same temperature, and you don’t have to worry about anything separating.”

Not everyone might have the patience for tempering, which can be a tedious process. “Another way to get a happy medium is to put all the ingredients into a bowl. Put in the cream and start stirring slowly from the middle,” he says. “Keep making slow circles until you get a creamy mixture in the middle. Make your circles bigger and bigger until you incorporate all the ingredients together—ideally with a whisk, not a spoon—until you’ve made an emulsion. This helps protect your texture and your flavor.”

DON’T PUT CHOCOLATE IN THE FRIDGE

“Chocolate is best enjoyed at room temperature,” he says. “It will taste a lot better. For another, when you take it out, it has a little bit of water condensation on top. The fat blooms, and you get white spots forming on top of the chocolate. It doesn’t affect the taste, but it looks horrible. And it doesn’t have the same texture anymore, either. The same goes for freezing. Don’t do it.”

“Ideally, for any chocolate, you want to store it in a cool, dark space—around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, with 50% humidity,” he continues. “Any good chocolate should last a minimum of a couple of weeks if stored correctly. Ours, in that kind of environment, will last four to six weeks. For every two to three degrees you increase in temperature, you lose on average three days of shelf life. Once you get to 80 degrees, it’s over. Eat it the same day because it starts to get soft if it’s real chocolate.”

HOMEMADE ICE CREAM: DON’T FREEZE IT SLOW

“With ice cream, the faster you freeze it, the better it will be. If it takes two hours to freeze, it’s going to suck. It needs to freeze to the center. Make sure the freezer is very cold and use smaller containers so they get cold as quickly as possible. Don’t put five pounds of ice cream in the freezer in one big chunk. Use five one-pound containers or 10 half-pound containers. These will freeze a lot quicker than one large area. We do this with our ice cream, and it comes out the creamiest you can imagine.”

TRY INVERTED SUGAR

“As I mentioned, water is really bad for texture and shelf life. But you can’t escape some water. If you’re using a 40% whipping cream, for example, that means you have 60% water. A unique trick we do is, if adding sugar, we always add some invert or inverted sugar like Trimoline. It’s a liquid sweetener that you get by breaking table sugar down into its component parts, glucose and fructose. If a recipe calls for 100 grams of sugar, you may want 10% inverted sugar. That’s because it encapsulates that free water that separates from the oil and prevents or slows the reaction of that water, the way it reacts with air or anything else. It’s magical. It’s stabilizing for shelf life, texture and all of that.”

Suwanee

Brandon Amato http://www.brandonjohnamato.com