In this article:
I've raved about Pump Street's Sourdough & Sea Salt Chocolate, Gingerbread Dark Chocolate, Panettone Dark Chocolate, and Hot Cross Bun Dark Chocolate bars.
Now it's time for something that, on the face of it, sounds more grown up and less sweet. It's time for a nutritious brown bread - in chocolate form, of course!
That's right. The bakery mashup series has gone utterly bonkers now, and has turned to the humble loaf of bread as its key ingredient. If that wasn't left field enough, the Pump Street magicians have fused it with a 40% white chocolate crafted from cocoa butter from Hacienda Limon, a 120 hectare plantation in the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador.
Brown bread and white chocolate.
Packaging
You know the drill by now. The bar ships inside the same packaging used elsewhere in the Pump Street range. It's a beige foil-backed paper envelope with a push seal lip. A silver bordered sticker lists the product name at the base of the wrapper, while a silver circular sticker (listing the batch number and best before date) seals the top.
The rear of the packaging discusses Pump Street's philosophy. It also explains that the resealable envelope and sticker is 100% compostable, designed as part of Pump Street's aim to make their packaging as sustainable and low impact as possible.
The ingredients are printed on a sticker at the bottom in English, German, and French.
Pump Street Chocolate 40% Ecuadorian White Brown Bread Chocolate ingredients:
Cocoa butter, cane sugar, milk powder, breadcrumbs, cocoa powder, sea salt. Cocoa solids: 40% minimum.
This bar contains a mere 28% sugars, which, for a white chocolate (known for absurdly high sugar content) is seriously impressive.
The bar contains dairy and gluten ingredients, and is made in a kitchen that also handles nuts and seeds.
Pump Street Chocolate 40% Ecuadorian White Brown Bread Chocolate Review
The bar follows the traditional Pump Street 16-segment chocolate bar format, with a lovely surface shine.
Let's deal with the elephant in the room. This white chocolate isn't your classic yellowish-white chocolate. No, it's a milk chocolate brown. Do not be fooled. This is still a white chocolate bar, but the addition of breadcrumbs and a dash of cocoa powder lend it its speckled brown hue.
The bar has a creamy, almost savoury aroma to it. It's a far cry from the synthetic vanilla aroma you typically associate with white chocolate.
The unexpectedly firm snap reveals a structure that is chock-full of breadcrumbs. There's no mistaking the star of the show here.
Brown bread and roasted coffee beans springs to mind upon first tasting it. There are oodles of crunchy, rich brown breadcrumbs that reveal toasty, nutty notes, and these dominate the flavour. There's a savoury saltiness that cuts through, as well as coffee bean flavours that creep in.
The aftertaste is that of freshly toasted crusty brown bread.
The best way to describe this fun and playful chocolate bar is as a lazy Sunday morning breakfast in chocolate form. It's utterly delicious and utterly addictive.
The white chocolate is perhaps used merely as a vehicle here, but given the clear and distinctive flavour of the brown bread, it would have been a mistake to use a milk or dark chocolate base. This would have introduced too many competing flavours and too much noise. Instead, Pump Street's decision of a brown-hued white chocolate creates the ideal vehicle for the brown bread flavours and sea salt to stand front and centre, with a creamy and gently sweet backdrop.
This is yet another exemplary creation from the Pump Street team and is a perfect demonstration of the magic that happens when the worlds of bakery and chocolate collide.
Admittedly, I thought the brown bread variant might have been a bit dull, but this is anything but run of the mill. It's a joyful bar that is an absolute treat to savour.
Pump Street Chocolate 40% Ecuadorian White Brown Bread Chocolate Review
RRP: £6.75 | Pump Street Chocolate | Shop now
Whimsical yet really, really delicious. Picture a a lazy Sunday morning breakfast in chocolate form and you'll understand why this bar is so special. Plus, it's a white chocolate that isn't white (or yellow), so that's quirky in its own right. I told you magic things happen when the worlds of Pump Street Chocolate and Pump Street Bakery collide, and this proves it.
Where to Buy Online
You can find this bar on the Pump Street website here (£6.75). It's also available at Cocoa Runners (£6.75) and Halen Môn (£6.95).
Right now, the full Pump Street Bakery range looks like this:
- Rye Crumb, Milk & Sea Salt 60%
- Sourdough & Sea Salt 66%
- Panettone 70%
- Eccles 55%
- Brown Bread 40%
- Croissant Bar 62%
- Gingerbread Bar 62%
- Hot Cross Bun 58% (isn't currently available)
I've got three bars left on my wish-list to complete the series. Stay tuned.
Tell Pump Street Chocolate You Saw It On Chocolatier.co.uk!
Please mention Chocolatier.co.uk in your order notes when you place an order with Pump Street Chocolate online. It means the world to me, and lets Pump Street Chocolate know Chocolatier.co.uk helped you decide to make a purchase today. Thank you for your support
If you could combine any baked good into chocolate, what would it be? Let me know in a comment below.
