Making craft chocolate from the bean is a complex process. It requires careful attention to many details that start with the farmers. Here you can read abou tand see our entire process of bean to bar chocolate.
These are pictures of cacao given to us from our friends at the farm Venturosa in Bahia Brazil.
The fruit pulp surrounding the cacao seeds reacts with the natural yeasts present in the air. The sugary pupl turns to alcohol and then to acetic acid and sort of melts away leaving cocoa beans. This fermentation process develps flavors in the cocoa beans taht are unique to that particular origin. Proper fermentation technique is very important in producing the kind of premium cocoa beans that we can use to make fine flavor chocolate.
After cleaning and sorting, the cocoa beans are fire roasted low & slow in a solid clay brick oven we built. Cocoa beans gently turning in our custom drum roaster have time to develop complex flavors from the radiant heat coming off bricks and rocks. This roasting method creates flavors in chocolate that are unique to Tejas Chocolate. Each origin of cacao has it's own specific temperature and time designed to let the cacao reveal its unique flavor profile.
Tempering Chocolate is a process where we raise, lower, and raise again the temperature of the melted chocolate in very specific steps and temperatures. Tempered chocolate gives us the glossy and crisp finish that we all expect to have in fine chocolate.
