Pump Street Bakery Sourdough and Sea Salt Chocolate

This is pretty much my favourite chocolate bar at the moment.

Pump Street is a Bakery up in Suffolk. I’d been aware of them for some time, mainly as I’d heard they were producing some increasingly good bean to bar chocolate, still something of a rarity in this country. Having tried it since, I concur, it is indeed very tasty. However THIS bar is something else entirely.

I went along to the launch at The Quality Chop House shop where I was able to sample the chocolate bar (I sort of forgot to try any of their others whilst there – oops) as well as their excellent sourdough bread, the very same that they use in the bar, alongside a very complimentary red wine.

I know Paul A Young recently produced a bar in collaboration with Peckham’s Brick House sourdough. Here however, the sourdough is incorporated into the conching process itself as well as larger crumbs added later on along with Maldon sea salt; the resulting bar has the most incredible texture with that sour bread tang. It’s a bar that’s fascinating enough that I want to eat piece after piece in quick succession, the 66% chocolate is smooth and malty but texturally satisfying. I just can’t get enough of it. I detect a note of rosemary in the finish of a number of the squares from my block which causes me to think perhaps they’re odours absorbed from around the bakery.

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It’s funny, as I generally don’t like biscuit/crunch anywhere near my chocolate; aside from the fun of nibbling the edges from a Kit Kat or Club, biscuit can, frankly, do one. However, it seems, like all other areas of my life, bread is a welcome addition. Who knew it would go so well with chocolate?!

In short – and I’m trying to produce some shorter posts in order to cover more of the things I want to share – get some. You won’t be disappointed!