Bread and Chocolate

In addition to the pizza lunch below, over the weekend I tried my hand at Michael Laiskonis's "Chocolate Olive Oil". This was my first foray into even the fringes of so-called "molecular cuisine". I am firmly ensconsed in the homey side of the world, and what Wylie Dufresne is doing at WD-50 has little superficial appeal to me.

At the threshold, I've decided that I need to not do food photography with my iphone. It's a wonderful tool, but it really sells my food a little short, compared to all the other pictures floating around on the internet. But moving on to the chocolate olive oil, the finished product was delicious, but I think I made two mistakes.

1. There were small pockets of gummy something in the middle of the individual chocolate packages. I believe they must have been undisolved agar agar, but I'd like to know for sure.

2. I omitted the glucose syrup, which I think is responsible for the relatively matte finish.

Also note, of course, that I hadn't made bread, so I used a crostini instead, and I think that fleur de sel would be better on the chocolate than the sea salt I used. Nonetheless, it was a delightful experiment.