Chocolate Amatller Barcelona Centenario
Alphonse Mucha
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La Belle Cuisine - More Chocolate...

   Fine Cuisine with Art Infusion

"To cook is to create. And to create well...is an act of integrity, and faith."

Couverture - The Professional View

"Chocolate flows in deep dark, sweet waves,
a river to ignite my mind and alert my senses."
~ Unknown

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Couverture - The Professional View


The Chocolate Bible
by Christian Teubner, 1997, Penguin Studio

“The main difference between couverture and the type of chocolate used for chocolate bars and other commercial chocolate products is the high cocoa butter content. This allows it to flow more easily, a property that is very important to the confectionery industry, which uses it for molding and coating the most varied products, from chocolates to cakes.
The quality of chocolate and couverture depends on the quality of the cocoa beans and the processing, and this is often reflected in the price.
The ease with which couverture can be worked depends ultimately on its consistency, and here the industry has a vast palette of products to offer.
When technical experts look at the range of couvertures available, they do not use terms such as ‘semisweet’, ‘bittersweet’, and so on, which we see on bars of chocolate. They deal in hard facts. And look at the percentages of the ingredients:

1. cocoa solids
2. sugar
3. total fat content

The formula on industrial couverture packaging may look something like this: 60/40/38. This means that there is 60 percent cocoa solids, 40 percent sugar, and 38 percent total fat content. This describes a bitter couverture, which is the most frequently used. If it contains less than 60 percent cocoa components, the couverture is ‘semisweet”; if it contains more than 60 percent, it is ‘extra bitter’. A 70/30/38 indicates 70 percent cocoa solids and only 30 percent sugar. In milk chocolate couverture the average ratio of cocoa solids is about 36 percent. Its formula is: 36/42/38. The third figure, the total fat content, indicates the viscosity of the couverture. The higher the total fat content, the greater the viscosity.”