Chuck
Siegel
The
chocolatier
Culinate.com By Emily Stone
July
16, 2007
Chuck Siegel is a 20-year
veteran of the Bay Area chocolate scene and the founder of Charles
Chocolates. He rejects the industrial supply chain and handpicks his
own chocolate ingredients.
Over the past 10 years,
Both Scharffen Berger and Guittard
represent a large part of why the Bay Area is such an important chocolate area;
Scharffen Berger, because they really understand how
to market their product to a wider audience, and Guittard,
because they have a huge impact on the chocolatier
and pastry-chef markets nationwide. As far as chocolatiers
are concerned, we live in one of the most vibrant and innovative food
communities in the country. It’s almost inevitable that we’re influential.
What ingredients do you use in
the hot chocolate and the pastries sold at your café?
In the hot chocolate, we’ll be using Straus
cream. For the pastries, when we’re using dairy it will be Straus. The flours
will be from a mill in the Bay Area called Giusto's. It’s a local vendor and
it’s organic, which are two things we look for.
Chocolates
fresh off the line at Charles Chocolates.
How did you choose Straus as your
dairy source?
In candy making, we have to cook cream, and usually that degrades the flavor
and the texture of the cream. The thing that we’re most used to seeing is a
bitter aftertaste. The Straus cream, even when we bring it to a boil, stays
really, really sweet. Outside of European cream, it’s the only cream I’ve found
where that’s the case. The flavor is just fantastic.
Why are organic foods so
important to you?
I’ve always felt very strongly that we should eat food that is, if you will,
found in nature. I don’t believe in overprocessed
foods. I don’t believe in foods that contain additives, preservatives, or
chemicals. Those things basically have no reason to be in the food in the first
place, other than to give it a 12-month shelf life.
How do you feel about using
preservatives and additives in chocolate, then?
If you look at our chocolate truffles, they have a four-week shelf-life. Now,
that’s primarily because dairy products go bad really fast. The fact that we
cook the cream first lets it last that long, combined with a “vacuum-mixing”
process that allows us to make ganache without
incorporating air into it. But, at the end of the day, there’s nothing in there
to retard the growth of all the stuff that makes dairy go bad.
I won’t name names, but when you see a
truffle that’s on the shelf at Macy’s, you know if there’s cream, there are
also preservatives and additives. I mean, if you think about the distribution
chain to get a product from any manufacturer onto the shelves of one of their
400 stores, and then have it sit there for however long it has to before it
sells …
We certainly have vendors trying to sell
us stuff that has additives. We have the additive companies themselves calling
us, assuming that we use those ingredients. They’re trying to sell me
preservatives that will allow our products to go through that kind of classic
distribution chain. But we don’t want to go through that distribution chain, so
it’s moot.
Do you think consumers are
becoming more savvy about their chocolates, seeking
out the product with the shorter shelf life?
Oh, absolutely. Our customers don’t want us to sell a truffle that lasts for
four months. With a four-week shelf life, we can ship to consumers anywhere.
But part of our model is everything gets shipped within three days of being
made, because we know that when someone gets a one-pound box of chocolate,
they’re not going to eat it all in a day or two. We want the customers to get
the full benefit of that shelf life. They’re buying our product — they’re
paying a premium for it, quite frankly — because they know it’s all natural and
it’s naturally perishable.
What about organic chocolate? Do
you use it?
Well, it’s definitely something that I’m very, very interested in. We get
samples from all of the organic chocolate companies. With one exception, I have
yet to find an organic chocolate that’s really good and that I could use for my
confections in good conscience.
Most organic chocolates, certainly from
the taste perspective, leave me kind of wanting. The beans don’t have the
character of some of the conventional beans from really, really old cacao
plantations.
But I have recently become very
interested in a new company up in
What are the rest of the organic
chocolate companies doing wrong?
It’s not the chocolate companies, necessarily. A lot of it is the maturity of
the cacao. A lot of what’s been planted organic is just really immature. It’s
kind of like wine grapes. When you plant a new vineyard, the first grapes that
are produced by the vineyard just aren’t that good. But after about 10 years,
the vines start producing phenomenal grapes. And cacao is very similar. So as
time goes by, all of this organic root stock that’s
been planted will start producing phenomenal beans. It’s just a matter of time.
When do you expect the bulk of
other organic companies to hit that 10-year mark?
Oh, I’d say within the next five years. It’s coming pretty quickly.
New York-based Emily Stone keeps a blog called Chocolate in Context.