45. Le Comptoir du Cacao

May 8, 2023

5 businesses that I have opened during my lifetime.

Projet Espoir et Equité, opened in 2020.

"You cannot start wholesale."  Le Comptoir du Cacao--May 1, 2023

Description of products:  pastries, chocolates, drinks, ice creams and sorbets.

Alkalizing cocoa beans--a Faustian bargain.

How to make palmiers.

Next trip to Côte d'Ivoire.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:44

That was J.S. Box Prelude Number Nine in E major. And I chose to play it on the organ, one of the organ settings on my keyboard, because there's a um there are several voices that hold through, and you can't hear that on harpsichord or a or on a piano. So the organ is the superior instrument in this case, keyboard instrument for holding a voice through. Anyway, welcome to podcast number 45. It's entitled Putting Together a Business. And it's all about the business that I've started called Le Comtoir du Cacao, which is a little chocolate cafe that I've opened up in downtown Cord in the lower part of Cord near where all the tourists hang out. On May 1st of this year, I opened yet another business. This time it's a chocolate shop and cafe in Cord sur Ciel here in Departement 81, otherwise known as the Tarn. I've opened five businesses in my life: a restaurant bakery in an old Victorian house in East Austin, Texas in 1978, a restaurant, a separate bakery in West Austin, Texas in 1980, a restaurant bakery in San Luis Obispo, California in 2004, and a chocolate shop also in San Luis Obispo. And now here I've opened a chocolate cafe in Cordesur Ciel. The first four businesses were for profit and barely made any money. The fifth is a non-profit, but Hope Springs Eternal. I hope it at least breaks even. In December 2021, I established Projet Espoir et Equité, a French version and literally the French translation of Project Hope and Fairness. I did this because since we moved to France in 2018, I've wanted to push direct trade chocolate into the European market. I couldn't do it as Project Hope and Fairness as I couldn't open a bank account or buy insurance in the name of an American nonprofit. So I had to establish a French nonprofit. In December of 2021, I submitted the paperwork to establish an association but non lucratif, which is French for nonprofit. For all of 2022, I designed packaging manufactured chocolates using dark and milk chocolate made by Sokol Plan, the agricultural cooperative that Project Open Fairness funded back in 2019, and equipped them with the appropriate machines. My efforts focused on selling wholesale chocolate products to local businesses. However, after a year of distributing samples to restaurants, tea and coffee shops, and supermarkets in the nearest city, Albi, I decided that wholesale is not the way to go. It became apparent to me that one should develop a brand in a retail space first that gains recognition before attempting the much more challenging uh prospect of selling wholesale. So on April 15th, I started renting 12 Avenue du Onze Novembre 1918, which is Armistice Day, 12th Avenue of 11th November 1918. That's Armistice Day for the First World War. Practically every city in France has a street named after the this Armistice Day. We called the shop Le Comtoir du Cacao or the Chocolate Counter, and we opened on May 1st, which is also known as Le Jour du Travailleur, the Day of the Worker. The back half of the space is devoted to production and the front half to sales. The back half has two refrigerators, two freezers, two production tables, an oven mixer, microwave, and dry storage. It is separated from the front half by a very nice wooden divider, in front of which are three pieces of furniture for displaying product and holding coffee and tea machinery. The counter has five bell jars with five different products meringue with chopped chocolate, chocolate mandied orange peel, buttery flaky palmiers, cookies made with buckwheat flour that are gluten-free but contain orange and chocolate and hazelnuts, and fudgy brownies topped with butterscotch icing. I will be varying the assortment, but the two mainstays of that assortment of pastries, uh three mainstays actually, that won't change is I'll always have meringues, I'll always have palmies, and I'll always have cookies, which the French call cookies. To the left of the counter is a shelving unit displaying truffle assortments and cocoa beans. These include bags of chocolate beans for tasting in six different flavors milk chocolate, dark chocolate, burnt almond, praline with uh and orange and cardamom. There are also bags of candied cocoa beans dusted with cardamom flavored cocoa powder and ginger-flavored cocoa powder, assorted pinuches, and spicy speculose cookies coated with chocolate. We serve hot chocolate with our really excellent cocoa powder made using the machinery that Project Open Fairness bought for Soco Plan two years ago. I am hoping to develop a market for the cocoa beverage mix as well as the candied cacao beans. The cocoa is not alcoholized. This may come as a bit of a surprise, but most cocoa sold in the US and in Europe has been treated with potassium carbonate in order to give it a rich chocolatey flavor and color. However, it comes with a Faustian bargain. By alcoholizing the cocoa beans, you remove the polyphenols that lower blood pressure, and you also remove delicate floral fruity flavors, leaving a soapy burnt taste that has come to be equated with the flavor of cocoa. Soap uh happens when you react fatty acids, such as you find in cocoa butter, with an alkali. In this case, potassium carbonate produces potassium palmitate, potassium stearate, and potassium oleate soap. I used to prefer alkalized cocoa. Like most Americans, I was addicted to that flavor. Um, but now I've come to uh realize that it's actually the flavor of chocolate soap and burnt chocolate. Uh so now I've come to prefer the cocoa that we get from Soco Plan that has a nice honey background flavor with a lot of floral and fruity notes, and also it has not had its nutritional benefits destroyed by the alkali. As for the candied cocoa bean, I first encountered them in Peru and then in a chocolate shop in the Abidjan airport in Côte d'Ivoire. I was quite impressed with their delicate sweetness, which is perfect for a diabetic who can tolerate low levels of sugar, and the myriad of fermented cocoa flavors contributed by a bean that has not been ground into chocolate and endused with vanilla. Candied cocoa beans are perfect accompaniments to cocoa, tea, or hot chocolate as well as juxtaposed to creamy desserts. To make them, you first roast fermented dried beans in order to develop the chocolatey flavor and loosen the skins. Then you peel away the skins by hand, boil the beans in a sugar syrup until the water evaporates, leaving behind a crusty, sweet surface. This is the same technique developed thousands of years ago in Persia, India, Egypt, and the Middle East to create what we now call the Jordan almond, which was served at weddings in ancient Rome and in Europe during the Renaissance. Jordan almonds are coated in a candy glaze, but candied cocoa beans are coated first in a thin layer of chocolate and then powdered with cocoa powder. The comptoir du cacao sells them in three flavors, nature, that is, without any added flavor, just the chocolate flavor, or co uh ginger or uh cardamom. Every shot of espresso, cafe creme, cappuccino, tea, or hot chocolate that we serve gets a candied cocoa bean on the saucer. French cafes, that is the the businesses that sell cafe, uh French cafes serve their hot beverages with in four alternatives. Alternative number one is nada, nothing, that is nothing on the saucer. Number two is a puffed corn ball reminiscence of reminiscent of kick cereal coated in an artificial chocolate glaze and wrapped in colorful plastic. Alternative three is a foil wrapped square of chocolate, often of low quality. And alternative four is a speculose cookie. The best of the four alternatives is the chocolate, but only of course is it's good if it's made with if it's good chocolate. Most often, however, it's bad chocolate. Um, likewise the speculose cookie is not a good Dutch speculose cookie made with a blend of spices and butter. Instead, it's a crunchy cinnamon cookie made with shortening. It's not real. And like the Ivorian chocolate alternative, it's boring. So I'm hoping to introduce the candied cocoa bean to France and maybe farther up farther into Europe. Uh, these two culinary movements, natural cocoa powder and crystallized cocoa beans, could be very good for the Ivorean cocoa farmer. If we can build dozens of chocolate producing cocoa cooperatives and equip them with cocoa presses and grinders, we could develop a supply of Ivorian cocoa powder made in the village and recognized for its delicacy of flavor. Likewise, with the roaster used uh in the process of making chocolate, these villages can lightly roast the cocoa beans and employees can peel the beans by hand, coat them in chocolate they made themselves, and dust them with cocoa powder that they also made themselves. This is truly an exercise in job creation. Our counter displays also a variety of pastries. The number one pastry is the palmier, supposedly named after a palm leaf or a palm tree. The pastry doesn't look at all like a palm leaf or a palm tree, none that I've ever seen anyway. In French Switzerland, they don't call it the palmier, they call it Cœur de France, which I think is more realistic, heart of France, because it is really uh basic to French the culinary, to the French culinary tradition. The palmier is truly one of the French culinary grates. It's flaky, crunchy, friable, buttery, and caramelly. A sensory orchestra. You make the butterpuff pastry, you don't buy it. This is because you have to roll the dough out in sugar. Butterpuff pastry uh usually gets puff pastry, by the way, usually gets five tuk or chef hats in difficulty. From my eight-month-long internship in 1971, when when I made all the puff pastry for a one-star Michelin restaurant, Ostellerie Bourguignon, until now, uh 2023, making puff pastry has been part of my skill set. For Le Contoir du Cacao, I make it the puff pastry in 500 gram batches because we're uh still getting started and have comparatively few customers. So a 500 gram batch is 500 grams of flour and 500 grams of butter, uh, which means that the total batch is a little over one kilo. First, I put the block of butter out on the counter to let it soften slowly. The flour is basically all purpose with a protein content around 9% and about 12 grams of salt. I put it in a bowl with the dough hook and I turn on the mixer and slowly add ice water, which I don't measure by the way. Uh it's like driving. You don't look at the tachometer while switching gears. You just listen and change the gears. One might call it driving by the seat of the pants. Um, the dough should become quite smooth after about five minutes of mixing, and it should be about a little firmer than softened butter. The dough, which the French call a paton or little dough, must be refrigerated for one to two hours. It should be covered with plastic film to keep it from crusting over. After one to two hours, uh the puff pastry uh dough paton softens a bit because it uh of uh the breaking of disulfide bonds, it made the gluten matrix more extensible. At this point, I turn the dough out on a floured board and push it out into a rectangle with my fingertips until it's about a half inch thick. I take the butter, divide it in two, dust it with flour and pound it out so I get two blocks that equal an area about one third of the dough rectangle. A sec I then put the butter in the middle third of the dough rectangle, and I fold a second third of the dough over to cover the butter, and then I place the second pounded out piece of butter on top of that. And then I fold the third third uh of the rectangle over the second butter to make a package that is essentially dough butter dough butter dough. Five layers. I pinch the edges together to lock the butter in. In the pastry world, this is called locking it in. I then dust the package and pound it out, rolling it out to a rectangle that is about eight inches by 30 inches, and fold this in thirds. This produces a uh 13 layers because it's three. I fold it in thirds, so three times five, which is the original number of layers. So three times five minus two, which comes out to thirteen. This is referred to at turn as uh turn number one. I cover the dough and let it chill in the fridge for about 10 minutes, then remove it and roll it out again, always dusting with flour to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin or the table. I repeat the process, rolling it out eight inches to a rectangle of about eight inches by thirty inches to form again uh this time triple the layers. I started out with 13, this time at the beginning of turn number two, triple times three, thirteen times three, that's thirty-nine minus two, because two layers meld together, two dough layers, so that gives us thirty-seven layers. That's turn number two. Then the next rollout or turn is thirty-seven times three minus two or one hundred and seven layers of dough alternated with butter. That's turn number three. And the fourth turn, our fourth rollout, um, is 107 times three minus two or three hundred and nineteen layers of dough alternated with butter. Between each turn, I let the dough rest about 10 minutes, giving the disulfide bonds time to collapse a little bit, thereby making the dough more extensible and easier to roll out. If you push it too hard, you will tear the dough layers. So that's why you allow some time in between turns. After turn number four, I allow the dough to rest two hours. At this point, uh the dough firms up a bit and it becomes more extensible. I then cut the dough in half and roll it out in sugar, not flour, this time. I use organic sugar for two reasons. One, it does not involve the death of animals, and two, it is more flavorful and more nutritious. Organic sugar is not whitened with bone char, uh, which involves uh animal bones that have been baked until uh in an in a low oxygen environment to make a bone charcoal, which they call bone char. Uh the bone char, which is ground up into a powder, is mixed with the cocoa the organ with the sugar syrup and the um activated charcoal removes most flavors, most colors, and most nutrients. So essentially sugar becomes white and it has no color, no flavor, and no do no nutrients other than uh sugar, then calories. I roll the dough out in the sugar in organic sugar, which is tan, uh, to form a rectangle, approximately 14 inches wide by 18 inches long, and then fold the long it edges in twice on each side, uh, and then fold these two to form the palmier appearance. Um then I repeat this process with the second piece of dough, and I put both rolls back in the refrigerator for about half an hour to allow them to set up and become firm. Then these slices, then I slice them across uh about half an inch thick, no thicker than half an inch, otherwise they will not bake properly. And I stand them on end uh in a four by four pattern on a half sheet pan, the domestic size sheet pan, and bake them at 375 degrees. After about twenty five minutes, I flip each palmier over and bake it on the other side until they are firm in the center and not burnt at the edges. They should develop a rich caramel appearance which gives them the best flavor. Well, that's it on the Contoir du Cacao for now. The next podcast is going to be after our upcoming trip to Côte d'Ivoire. So Peggy Bates and I, Peggy's on the board of Project Open Fairness. Uh we are going to Côte d'Ivoire next June 11th. Uh we will be arriving in Abidjan that evening and the next day traveling to the town of Ndusi, which is 90 minutes northwest of Abidjan. There we will set up the mini chocolate factory and start a batch of chocolate. My next podcast will be audio from that trip. Something exciting to look forward to. Well, please don't forget that our efforts to revolutionize the chocolate industry requires regular funding. The machines alone for this trip cost forty five thousand dollars, and the June trip for the two of us will cost at least another ten thousand. Well, that's it. Hasta luego, abiento, bisbald, see you soon. And we finish with the Chopin Prelude number nine in E major. It's in the same key as the Bach, but you'll see that it's um in the base clef uh quite different from the Bach.