Until recently, the intricate process of making chocolate was a mysterious process. Most people have never considered how chocolate is made. In this series, we will explore each step taken at Parré Chocolat to give you a delicious dark chocolate experience.
Step 1 - Roasting
We’ve written about our sourcing and selection process. By using the highest quality cocoa beans we are able to guarantee the high quality product we love providing for our customers.
How do cocoa beans affect the flavor of our chocolate? Part of the answer lies in our roasting method.
Cocoa beans arrive to us after going through a fermenting and drying process, making them bitter and acidic. Not very pleasant for a chocolate treat, but these cocoa beans already have an incredible amount of inherent flavors hidden behind that bitterness. Some of these natural flavors are brought out during roasting. The process is similar to roasting hazelnuts, almonds, or coffee.
Since roasting is a major factor in the final flavor profile of our chocolate, we take time to develop a roast profile for each origin of every vintage year. We want to ensure our chocolate reflects the unique attributes of the cocoa beans we work with.
Origin vintages often differ from year to year as a result from natural changes in terroir and weather conditions, as well as seasonal fluctuations in our partners’ natural fermentation processes. By testing different roasting times and temperatures, we can determine how to best highlight the inherent flavor of each origin for that particular year.
Researchers are now diving into the roasting process to find potential health benefits, according to an article on Science X:
“Chocolate, a food usually consumed for pleasure, in recent years has been reconsidered as a source of healthy compounds, noted lead researcher Joshua Lambert, associate professor of food science. The goal of the study, he explained, was to learn whether the roasting of cocoa beans could both preserve preferred flavor characteristics and boost health benefits.
Follow the link here to learn more about what they discovered.
