3.3.5 Supporting Evidence: Chocolate Making

Chocolate makers as distinct from chocolatiers make chocolate from beans.  Conching is perhaps the most critical step.  Although the ferementation and roasting are critically important as well.

TREE / WHOLE POD —> Chocolate
Harvest — pick the cacao pod off the cacao tree.
Ferment

• within the white sugary fruity pulp surrounding the cacao beans.
• allow to ferment in its own juices for 3-9 days (often covered with banana leaves)
• flavor develops, seeds turn brown
• now commonly referred to as cocoa beans rather than cacao beans
• the white pulpy fruit is fermented (not the bean) and this affects the bean by killing the germ, thus initiating hydrolyzing and oxidizing reactions.

Drying — spread out in the sun and turn for 5-7 days
Roasting— much like coffee (or indeed almost any seed), roasting develops and enhances flavor.   
Dehulling/Winnowing — Thin papery skin that can be easily hand peeled when you buy whole beans.  Industrially, they remove it now and the bean will often naturally fall apart into cacao nibs.
Grinding— turn the beans/nibs into cocoa mass/paste/liquor via steel rollers or grinding stones
Cocoa mass can be sold, pressed to separate cocoa solids from cacao butter or conched with sugar into refined chocolate.
Conching —
Add extra cocoa butter into the ground bean to make characteristic chocolate
Anywhere from several hours to several days
Lindt dramatically improves technique in 1879
Crucial in removing the grittiness of cacao beans. 

Theobroma cacao

• All chocolate is made from cacao beans from the Theobroma Cacao tree.  
• Both the beans' fat and solids are necessary ingredients in the alchemy of chocolate.  
• Cacao trees offer their pods with 40-50 seeds/beans from the tree all seasons of the year.
• This tree only grows within tropics +- 23 degrees of the equator and likes to be in the understory (to protect from sun and wind) of a moist humid jungle.  

There are 3 common VARIETIES

• Forastero(70%) — grown now in Africa and Central/South America
• Criollo 10% Central/South America
• Tinitario 20% central/South America — hybrid of Forastero and Criollo developed in Trinidad

Some people break chocolate into ten varietals today : Amelonado, Contamana, Criollo, Curaray, Guiana, Iquitos, Maranon, Nacional, Nanay, Purus

Blooming  —
Two types of blooming: sugar and fat
Fat blooming is often temperature challenges for the finicky cocoa butter
Sugar blooming often involves moisture creating sugar crystalization
Tips: Don’t let you chocolate get hot or wet or dramatic temperature change. Don’t refrigerate.
BonBon —  French good good — see molded chocolate
CHOCOLATIER
Understands
    •    the history of chocolate
    •    modern techniques of cultivation and processing
    •    chocolate tempering techniques: tempering, dipping, decorating, molding
    •    chocolate and liquid preparation: ganache, mousse
    •    classification — ganache, tempering, dipped, molded chocolates
    •    business management skills for production and marketing
Couverture  (etymology French couvrir = to cover.)
Chocolate with extra cocoa butter specifically for tempering and coating (dipping/ molding)
The extra fat in couverture chocolate aids in the tempering process and creates the snap and the shine. Dipped/ Hand Dipped  — the filling/ganache/ fruit jellies/ nut pastes is usually refrigerated —> sets —> cut in squares when firm then dipped
Emulsion (see emulsion article) -- Typical vinaigrette is a water (vinegar) in oil emulsion.  Ganache is an oil in water emulsion.   Mixing milk and chocolate will cause it to seize unless you have awareness around method and temperature.
Ganache — chocolate held in a water based emulsion, most commonly cream or half and half although wine and water can be used to make chocolate emulsions.  
Hand Dipped — see dipped
Molded chocolate — use a mold (silicon or other) to pipe in a filling or create hollow chocolates
Rule of Threes
One of the methods/techniques for making a ganache (or a chocolate water emulsion)
Incorporate the liquid into the chocolate in thirds.
In the first phase, the chocolate doesn’t look pretty (it seizes).  Do not add liquid faster.  Take your time making emulsion.  Stir energetically.
Seeding — one method for tempering that involves putting 1/4 of the total chocolate in to already heated chocolate (110-120 degrees F) -- see tempering
then cool to 80-90 degrees
Seizing — Chocolate becoming a grainy hard mass when in contact with water.  Very specific techniques are used to make ganache which is a mixture of chocolate (fat) and milk (water)
Tabling  — Old school tempering technique where you spread liquid chocolate on the table in order to stimulate crystallization of Form V crystals.
Tempering  — We temper chocolate for the shine and the snap.  It is a technique with rigorous control regarding time and temperature that chocolatiers must master in order to produce dipped, molded and bar chocolate that looks beautiful and melts in your mouth not in your hand.
Truffle -  A high chocolate to cream ratio ganache  (stiffest ganache) that makes it rollable and standable on it’s own.  — often dipped in tempered chocolate then rolled in cocoa powder or nuts.