In the basement kitchen of a New York city restaurant, a brigade of pastry chefs is making truffles. As white-clad figures hurry around carrying slabs of Valrhona chocolate and dark haystacks of Tahitian vanilla beans, a cook holding a small vat of molten tempered chocolate deftly avoids a collision with a busboy. In their midst, a young French chef, seemingly oblivious to the bustle, auditions for a place on a team. Under the cool eye of the head pastry chef, he shows off his technique, rolling piped mounds of ganache into spheres and then dipping them into chocolate with precise, practiced movements. His concentration is intense. After all, this is important: They are making truffles.
Peek at chocolate under a microscope, and you'll discover molecules of cocoa solids and cocoa butter neatly crystallized in a stable suspension. Good-quality chocolate has a nice, crisp snap, and a melting poing in the low nineties. To make ganache, you gently melt chocolate to open up this stable structure, incorporating hot cream, then letting the mixture restabilize. By varying the amount of cream, you can control the ganache's consistency, from dense truffle centers to a smooth liquid glaze.
When making ganache, use a high-quality chocolate. European-style "couverture" chocolate has an especially high cocoa-butter content, and therefore flows freely when melted, is easier to work, and sets with a glossier surface and a firmer snap: In short, it is generally worth the extra expense. Because of the additional cocoa butter, it also tastes richer and more chocolaty than most commercial bar chocolates. Good brands include Valrhona, Lindt, Callebaut, Tobler, and Scharffen Berger (a fairly new American chocolate).
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