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Define chocolatier. Chocolatier synonyms, chocolatier pronunciation, chocolatier translation, English dictionary definition of chocolatier. One who makes. A chocolatier is a person or company who makes confectionery from chocolate. Chocolatiers are distinct from chocolate makers, who create chocolate from cacao beans and other ingredients.
21 SharesThe other night I was having dinner in a restaurant, and struck up a conversation with the fellow dining at the next table, who turned out to be Swiss. As we talked, the conversation turned to what I did and when I replied that I wrote cookbooks on baking and chocolate. His curiosity was piqued, as well as that of the two Belgian women at another table.I knew exactly where the conversation soon would be heading, and of course, I was asked the inevitable question: “Which country do you think makes the best chocolate?”. So it doesn’t really matter if chocolate came from Belgium, Switzerland, France, or even, yup, the United States. We’re lucky to have good chocolate around the world.Chocolatier vs.
Chocolate-MakerOne thing that confuses people is the difference between a Chocolatier and a Chocolate Maker.A Chocolatier is someone who makes chocolate s, those dipped, nutty, or cream-filled confections that we all know and love. A Chocolate Maker is someone, or a company, that buys and roasts cocoa beans and grinds them into chocolate.There are lots of chocolatiers out there, probably (and hopefully) several in your city, but there are very few chocolate-makers, since the process is difficult and costly, and requires a lot of very specialized equipment and knowledge. There’s no shame in not making your own chocolate from scratch. Very few people can pull together the equipment for making chocolate, then figure out how to do it correctly, so most small-scale chocolate shops buy their couverture, melt it down, and use it for dipping their chocolates.Much of this discussion was also prompted by was an interesting series of articles about, outrageously-priced chocolate from Texas, which sells for almost $9 a piece, and someone tracked down their lineage. I don’t know if chocolate intended to give people the impression that they’re making their own chocolate from scratch or not (since I was polishing off a bottle of wine while I finished it) but the writer spent considerable time tracking down what he suspects is their couverture du jour.The writer noted that the company alluded to the fact they make their own couverture, but I never believe anyone who says they’re making their own chocolate unless they have some documentation to back it up, or I can see it being made.Very, very few chocolatiers make their own chocolate. Even a talent like in San Francisco, who’s a chocolatier, happily admits to buying his chocolate couverture, which he sources from the best.For more information, here’s a list of some of the small-scale chocolate-makers in the United States (updated in 2016). Thank you David for the list of US based chocolate-makers.
I have been fairly obsessed with the agriculture and processing of cacao since I visited Belize last November and am thrilled to know, definitively, who goes from bean to bar in the US. The Kekchi Maya of Belize have cultivated cacao for thousands of years. Today, a trip to the market in Punta Gorda will yield both bags of fermented and dried beans and small balls of partially processed cacao.
It was the unbroken link of the present to ancient times that first got my motor whirring. Now I can’t make it stop!. I live in the Seattle area and am a huge fan of Theo. (Tip: Take the tasty tour.) I didn’t care for dark chocolate before tasting their coffee Phinney bar. The origin bar line is amazing, and if anyone ever has a doubt about cacao’s terroir, try the Madagascar bar; you’d swear it had fruit in it.One point from your posting I’m confused about is the Dagoba listing as chocolate maker.
From Theo’s website and tour, you learn that they’re the only organic chocolate maker in the US. From Dagoba’s website, you learn that they’re organic but it doesn’t say explicitly that they make the chocolate. Are you sure Dagoba makes their chocolate? Or did they start doing it after the Hershey’s acquisition?Thanks!. Hi Judith: Yes, Italy is a great example.
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There’s amazing chocolate made there (as well as the supermarket stuff.) But I wonder how many people in Italy buy it, as opposed to how many Americans buy artisanal chocolate. And curiously, you can’t get hardly any of the Italian artisanal chocolates, like Slitti or Domori in Paris. Or American onesor even the French ones, save for a handful of places.(FYI: Aoki pastry shop carries 3 kinds of Domori chocolate and da rosa carries Amedei bars.)I find it intriguing that American’s have this reputation for crappy food, but there’s this big resurgence and interest in fine food products there, including chocolate. Maybe because it’s a novelty and people are looking for a re-connection with the producers of what their eating, but I don’t see as much evidence of it elsewhere. Is it the politics of economics of scale? I love sampling chocolate made by small-producers and always search vigorously for it wherever I’m visiting.I’d be curious to hear why other’s think artisanal chocolates are widely available in the US, but are not so commonly available in other countries.In constructive, non-judgemental ways, of course.(Ohand if anyone can tell my why my housecleaner uses my nice toenail brush to clean the bathtub when I have a good, heavy-duty cleaning brush specifically for that purpose, I’d love to know that as well.). Here in Holland we have lots of chocolate makers who make lots of horrible sicky tasting chocolate.
How on earth do they make chocolate have that greasy taste? Unfortunate really.I had some Ghirardelli at Christmas that a friend sent me and I was quite dumbstruck for a few minutes. It was great!
She sent Ghirardelli because she wanted me to have real American chocolate. To be representative of Holland I could have sent her some Droste but I don’t like it. I do like their cocoa though.Thanks for the insight into the Noka chocolate article. My opinion was that the article was interesting but if people wanted to be silly enough to pay that much for repackaged chocolate then why not let them. Dear David,your little story about chocolate made me laugh out loud. I’m a native Costarrican who knows for a fact that European countries don’t grow the Theobroma Cacao used to make the lovely confections found in lovely shops all over Europe.
I teach a baking and pastry class and on Chocolate Day the students always take me for a snob because I lean towards European makers rather than American, so thanks for the info on the domestic chocolate. Look forward to read your chocolate book (soon to be a proud member of my bookshelf), and hope to one day join you on your Parisian chocolate tour. Love your blog!!. Bonjour Estelle: I agree, and I think good food is more expensive and junk food is cheap in the US, whereas in France, good food is reasonable and junk food is expensive. When a croissant or baguette is around 85 centimes, and you can buy a nice selection of 3-4 outstanding cheeses for less than 10 euros, that’s not too expensive (and roughly the same price as a few cups of coffee at Starbucks.) The difference as well is there really isn’t any ‘cheap’ food here. Supermarket produce is pricey so people generally buy quality since there’s not as many low-priced options as in the US.(BTW: I’ve seen that icky green ‘guacamole’ here in France too!
But I’ll stick with foie gras). The discussion of American vs. European chocolate is interesting to me because I work in an imported chocolate shop in St. We operate on the assumption that imported chocolate experience should be more easily achievable, to a person here in St. Louis or (via our website) to anyone in the States or elsewhere. But we tend to get quite a few people in the shop convinced of one country’s supremacy in the chocolate realm, and most all of them convinced that European chocolate trumps American chocolate any day. We do carry Vosges chocolates, however, alongside Neuhaus and Cluizel, and pricewise Vosges is definitely not the cheapest.
There are two quotes (I hope I don’t botch them too terribly) that I read in Mort Rosenblum’s book, Chocolate, that I’m very fond of sharing: “Expensive chocolate is not necessarily the best, but the best chocolate is rarely cheap” and “There are no right or wrong answers when it comes to the best chocolate – only strong opinions.”. Hi David,As hardly a connoisseur of chocolate but definitely a lover- I’ve bookmarked your blog for months now and enjoyed all your insight and anecdotes. I was surprised thought to find Theo under your list of excellent chocolates.
I live in Seattle and have sampled both their straight-from-the-“factory” truffles and their wrapped bars on sale at the Dahlia Bakery near my office. Both times I was significantly disappointed. Honestly, I felt a little foolish having spent so much on something I liked so little.
I presonally prefer Dolfin chocolates which I believe are Belgian and available at many markets nearby. Good Afternoon David. The guy who did the investigation into Noka is a friend of mine. When I go to Dallas, we often have chocolate tastings. I kid him about his desk drawers at work hiding the largest and most impressive chocolate collection in the entire state of Texas. Right now I am enjoying some Amedi porcelana.Thank you for defining the difference between Chocolatier and Chocolate Maker. I will try to stop making that mistake and use the terms correctly.Great chocolate is just that, Great.
I am looking forward to tasting the new Askinoise 77% bar that Shawn is now making from cacao he is sourcing from the Philippines. Jo: Am not sure where you came to that conclusion since I mentioned and linked to chocolatiers and chocolate-makers in Italy and Belgium. (I did not write about fondeurs, like Neuhaus and Godiva Belgium, as they do not make their own chocolate.)Any one who thinks that Hershey’s chocolate is representative of all the chocolate sold in America obviously isn’t familiar with the small-scale chocolate-makers that I’ve mentioned. It’s like saying that McDonald’s is representative of all food in America. I don’t have a problem with Hershey’s or Mars: they do what they do.Since you have such a interested and informed clientele, you might wish to enlighten visitors to your shop about some of the great chocolates made in America, such as Theo, Amano, Taza, Rogue, Scharffen Berger, Patric, Steve Devries, and Askinoise, people who actually make bean-to-bar chocolate.But the only chocolate-maker that I’m familiar with in Belgium (not chocolate shops selling dipped-chocolates, but companies that make bean-to-bar chocolate) is Callebaut. If there are others, please let me know who they are as I’m always on the lookout for great bean-to-bar tablets of chocolate, especially from small producers, to feature on the site. Flo: I don’t know how many ‘artisan’ or bean-to-bar chocolate makers there are in Europe, but I only know one or two in France.
(Ok, three: Pralus, Dufour, and Bernachon.) But their chocolates aren’t widely distributed: for example, there’s one two places in France that sell chocolate, for example.As far as I know, no one has compiled a list of chocolate makers in Europe, like the one above. (I’ve seen a few lists, but they’ve included many chocolate fondeurse, erroneously.)The latest in America are the and the youngest is. I would love to find counterparts to these folks in Europe. So if you know of any, I’d be interested in tasting their chocolates and reporting about them on the site.
Wow that was a quick replyi just wanna point out that because you know more bean-to-bar chocolate makers in america than here, doesnt mean thats necessarily the case, though it may be or even be likely cuz i suppose you know the scene. But therefor your statement is still an assumption rather than a fact or you should’ve added something like “apparently” or “it seems like”.on the other hand the wikipedia list of chocolate manufacturers names around 20 american and 50 european ones, with 17 alone from switzerland. Calculating the number of artisan chocolate makers from this statistic i wouldnt be surprised if there were more in europe as well.also, a feeling prooved to me by amy’s homepage again (as much as i appreciate and respect her project), and what you might have experienced here too: internet presence, distribution and blogging in europe is probably not as well-established or omnipresent as its in the states. Maybe some local small-scale producers here still dont do this and therefor are yet to be discovered (dunno, maybe they spend more time on making chocolate) but of course thats just a far-fetched guess.anyway im gonna visit florence soon for the first time and already gathering all your infos on it. I also found a brand there called “vestri” that does actually have a homepage and seems to produce from bean to bar. But since im just a university student and therefor dont have so much money to spend on expensive experiments, i would like to have your advise on this brand in case you know it. Am interested in setting up a chocolate factory in a huge cocoa producing area and have 85,000tons available annually and increasing,being organic and with the european demand,the project is to build a small chocolate factory and buy all the cocoa on the island from a established cooperative and meet the local domestic and international.
Demands,This is Government approved with tax concessions and land already available with a port etc.I can guarantee a most lucrative outcome for the short and longterm. Ginger Elizabeth Chocolatier in Sacramento, California has been producing wonderful chocolates for a few years now. Ginger takes the time to infuse her ganache centers with a variety of aromatics and does not use any extracts. All of her products are all-natural and contain no preservatives. She makes everything from scratch. Give them a try and I am sure you will be pleased. She was recently chosen as a Top Ten Chocolatier by Dessert Professional, the magazine for the pastry and baking professionals.
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