C R U M B S
C O O K S
W I T H
nibs,” explains Jacques. “You can compare it to fruit. If you have a fresh apple that’s just come off the tree, it’s better when it’s perfectly ripe and fresh than if it’s been stored in a freezer for a year. And that’s better than if it’s been made into apple sauce, or cooked into some weird cake that you can buy in the supermarket for 20p. “Also, as soon as you roast cacao it gets much more bitter – that’s why producers make high sugar, high milk chocolate bars. They also like that it’s so much easier to get the shells off once the beans have been roasted.” Just how easy (or not!) it is to remove the shells is something that Jacques knows only too well. As a ‘bean to bar’ chocolatier, Jacques is involved in every single step of the creation of every single chocolate bar – beginning by removing all the shells. It’s a process known in the industry as ‘winnowing’, and although Jacques doesn’t quite do it by hand, it’s not far off. He actually uses a machine of his own creation (which he’s made from various pieces of household equipment, including a vacuum cleaner!), which breaks and separates the hard outer shell from the prized bean inside. The shells are used to make tea, while the beans go into an intense grinding process, which can last up to nine hours. Jacques fires up the grinder and pours in the cocoa nibs, and it’s not long before they visibly begin to change in consistency, from small hard nuggets to a thick, slightly grainy paste. Considering that nothing has been added to them, the transformation is pretty remarkable. Jacques explains that it’s all down to the natural fats in the cocoa that are released during the grinding process – but there’s a long way to go until it becomes the smooth liquid, with a consistency not dissimilar to melted chocolate, that he needs to work with. This can then then be tempered on the large marble slab on the other side of the room, to give it shine and snap, and turned into bars – all of which are wrapped and packed by hand.
42
CRUMBSMAG.COM