The How
Each step of the process of crafting chocolate from cacao seeds is done purposefully and methodically, babysat and fussed over (but without being a helicopter parent). (Yes we need to let their little lights shine but they do sometimes need a little herding so they don’t get lost.) (I guess that makes me the cattle dog of cacao). Every single origin has a different profile and attributes. With all these unique and changeable properties, making chocolate is a dance with genetics and terroir (generally meaning "a sense of place" which includes all the natural environment factors); soil, weather, elevation, latitude, farming practices and, post-harvest practices, all of which translates into specific sensory profiles. All of it matters, All has to be taken into consideration before and during each step of the process: selecting, testing, sorting, roasting, cracking, winnowing, grinding, refining, conching, tempering, molding, packaging. It seriously has got to be the slowest food of all. I make chocolate the old fashioned way. For instance, the grinding and refining is done ... with rocks. Smooth granite roller stones shear the particles against a granite plate. That step alone can vary between one to four days. The whole process start to finish takes 10 to 14 days; if it plays nicely and all goes like dominoes.
My recipes (although they are less like a recipe and more of a philosophy) are pure and simple. For the dark's there are only two ingredients; cacao and sugar. The dark milks are three ingredients; cacao, milk, sugar. And the white chocolate; cacao butter, milk, sugar. I never use other fats or oils and extracts for the origin bars and that is mainly because the whole idea here is to shine the spotlight on the origin. We don't want to cover it up! Although, I can tell you, once in a while I get some beans that I don't like. They really do need a burlap sack over their collective head. If they aren't good enough for a single origin bar, I may contemplate what they are capable of and try to figure out what exactly do they want to be when they grow up to be a chocolate bar and that's when I'll think about making an "inclusion" bar. (The addition of fruits, nuts, spices, vanilla etc).
BTW, my sugar is natural, unrefined, organic. Most of the beans are organic but usually this is by default. Not every producer who is growing organic can afford the costly organic certification. I like to use the Honduras Wampusirpi as an example. If the beans have to travel TWO DAYS by canoe just to get to the jungle fermentary, you can be pretty certain they aren't canoeing bags and jugs of pesticides! It's not practical. It's not affordable. They don't do it.