Jordi Roca, the world's best pastry chef: “My best chocolate brownie doesn't contain butter, but 181g of olive oil.”
Diners: 6
- Dark chocolate with 70% cocoa, 500g
- Extra virgin olive oil, 181 g
- Egg, 300 g, about 6 medium eggs
- Sugar, 345 g
- Wheat flour, 130 g
- Baking powder, 3 g
- Salt, 1 pinch
- Step 1 Preheat the oven to 180ºC with heat above and below and line a rectangular mold of about 20 x 30 centimeters with baking paper.
- Step 2 Melt the dark chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave in 30-second bursts, stirring between each one, and let it cool slightly.
- Step 3 Beat the eggs at room temperature with the sugar and a pinch of salt until the mixture turns slightly white and the sugar is dissolved.
- Step 4 Add the extra virgin olive oil in a thin stream, while continuing to beat, until it is fully incorporated.
- Step 5 Add the melted and tempered chocolate and mix until you get a smooth and shiny cream.
- Step 6 Sift the flour together with the baking powder and add them to the dough with folding motions, until no traces of flour remain.
- Step 7 Pour the dough into the mold and smooth it with a spatula.
- Step 8 Bake for 18 minutes, until the surface is set and shiny and the center jiggles slightly.
- Step 9 We take the brownie out and let it cool completely inside the mold before unmolding it.
- Step 10 Cut into square portions with a clean knife and serve.
It's no longer anything exceptional for a world-renowned chef to teach a recipe in a video.
YouTube has become an extension of many professional kitchens, allowing us to see techniques, tricks, and ways of working that for years were only available to those who worked in those restaurants.
Jordi Roca is one of the chefs who has embraced this way of experiencing cooking.
The chef, responsible for the desserts at El Celler de Can Roca, with three Michelin stars, and recognized by The World's 50 Best Restaurants as the best pastry chef in the world, often publishes videos in which the kitchen appears in a much less solemn and more accessible way for the rest of mortals than in a service at his restaurant.
In one of the episodes of Cosas de Casa, which is the name of his YouTube channel, he faces the pastry chef Miquel Guarro in a friendly duel and prepares his own version of brownie.
It's unique because it's a brownie that doesn't contain butter, but extra virgin olive oil.
And it's not simply a substitution to adapt the dessert to the Mediterranean pantry, because changing butter for oil also modifies the texture and the way the brownie is preserved.
Why use oil instead of butter?
Butter is not 100% fat. Approximately 16 to 18% of its composition is water, and it also contains a small amount of milk solids. Olive oil, on the other hand, is practically pure fat.
This means that, for the same amount, a dough prepared with oil has more effective fat.
Furthermore, butter solidifies as it cools and its fats crystallize, so the baked brownie tends to become firmer over time. Olive oil, on the other hand, remains liquid at room temperature and helps keep the crumb tender and moist for longer.
The question of flavor remains, because using olive oil in a chocolate dessert might seem like the result will be too intense, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Jordi Roca uses dark chocolate with 70% cocoa and, if a mild-profiled oil is also chosen, such as arbequina, the chocolate remains the star.
The result is also less heavy and cloying than many versions made with butter.
