Chocolate comes from cacao (pronounced kakow) tree, with the botanical name Theobroma cacao, from theo Greek for god and broma for food, so god food. It is a rather spindly tree that grows in the shadow of higher trees in humid conditions on either side of the equator.
The beans grow in a pod about the size of a football, in a range of colours, and grows straight from the trunk.
After the pod is picked it is opened up and the 40 or so beans and the white pulp they lie in are put in boxes lined with banana leaves to ferment for about five days.
Next the beans are spread out to dry in the sun for about a week. It’s at this stage, when they are ready to be shipped, that they stop being referred to as cacao and are called cocoa.
At the factory (often in Holland, France, Switzerland or Belgium), the beans are cleaned and crushed, sieved and blasted with air to release the kernels, called nibs, inside them.
The nibs are roasted then ground to produce cocoa mass, also called cocoa liquor, which is about 55% cocoa butter.
Then a strong press separates the cocoa butter from the cocoa mass. The cake of cocoa mass can be ground and sifted to produce cocoa powder or it can be further processed into chocolate.
To make chocolate, sugar, milk powder and extra cocoa butter can be added to the cocoa mass, which is then milled to the desired fineness, measured in microns. Anvers chocolate is milled to a very fine 10-12 microns. Block chocolate might be 30 microns.
Next the chocolate is conched, that is tossed back and forth in a heated trough for a few hours or a few days for the finest chocolate. During the process liquid is evaporated, volatile acids escape and the flavour mellows.
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