Speaking of those “gray streaks”…

Why exactly does “fat bloom” happen when melted chocolate re-solidifies? So asks reader Wendi. That’s a great question and it all has to do with cocoa butter crystals. Chocolate is full of them, at least when it’s in solid form. That’s partly a factor of cocoa butter’s composition, which is unusually uniform. It’s made up of just three different types of fats (as compared to butter which can have dozens). The reason that uniformity makes cocoa butter so crystal-prone is because similar molecules tend to stack up on one another like LEGOs under the right conditions, forming solid masses.

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When Cheap Chocolate Rules

That’s almost all of the time in my opinion. Expensive bar chocolate, to me, is the purview of candy lovers, not bakers. For bakers, chocolate is frequently just one component among many in a recipe, one that needs to be balanced against all the others. A sterling “grand cru” chocolate will be a hopeless distraction atop a doughnut, for example, and the doughnut will only undermine the qualities of the expensive chocolate. Sort of like washing down a complicated main course with a glass of Henri Jayer Richebourg, everybody loses.

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Things Are Heating Up!

The surfaces of my kitchen appliances especially. Posts may be a bit thin on the ground leading up to the holiday as I’ve got four different projects to knock out today alone! Add to that a record volume of pre-Christmas baking questions and things are hectic at Chez Pastry. But keep the questions comin’ if […]

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Molasses & Christmas

Reader Joanna writes:

Can you tell me why it seems like every holiday recipe has molasses in it? I can’t stand the taste of molasses and it seems like it’s everywhere this time of year. I was wondering why and I thought I’d ask!

That’s a great question. The reason is because molasses was once the most commonly used sweetener in America, particularly before 1900 when all sugar here was made from cane (Americans didn’t get on the beet sugar bandwagon until 1890). In those days crystal sugar was commonly available but still fairly expensive stuff. Molasses was nearly as sweet but cost a lot less, so if you were a member of a household of medium-to-modest means, odds are your mother used molasses a lot more often than she used sugar.

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Next Up: Butter Spritz Cookies (Spritzgebäck)

I haven’t had good butter “spritz” cookies since I left Chicago. As a kid in the suburbs I could pretty much always count on at least a few coming in the front door during the Great Christmas Sweet Exchange. Failing that, good ones could usually be found in just about any ethnic bakery: German, Swedish, […]

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What About the Valencia?

That’s actually not from Spain, reader Derrick, it’s from California. It was named the “Valencia” orange because a Spanish orchard worker thought it resembled a variety from back home. However it remains the world’s most important sweet orange varietal.

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Navel Gazing

Reader Diana asks if the original rosace a l’orange recipe called for navel oranges and if so, if there’s a substitute. The answer is that it definitely didn’t. I’m not sure what variety of orange Lenôtre used in the original, since navel oranges are mostly an American thing, I’m almost certain he used some other variety.

Navel orange trees are a variety first discovered in Brazil in the 1870’s, descendants of sweet orange trees first brought by Portuguese explorers. The varietal generated a lot of excitement in those days because its fruit was hardy, sweet and seedless. The little “mini” orange tucked into the blossom end of the fruit was also an interesting novelty.

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New Start, Old Starter

Reader Liz writes:

I have a related question. Does the age of the starter have anything to do with the sourdough flavor? It seems like old starters are always highly touted – is that just because it’s impressive to have maintained a culture for so long or is it possible that the conditions of the starter will, over time, become more hospitable for the more flavorful, higher acid-producing lactobacilli?

Hey Liz! I’m not a bread microbiologist, but it’s believed by many bakers that like people, the old the starter gets the more “like itself” it becomes

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