From cocoa seed to dark chocolate bar

The term "chocolate" is generally used to refer to all types of food products made from cocoa beans. However, chocolates differ from one another both in their composition and in the way they are made. Each type of chocolate has its own specific manufacturing process, but the process of making dark chocolate is very important, as all the ingredients of chocolate that are good for our health must be preserved during the process.

Dark chocolate is chocolate that has no added milk, which is why many people call it ''plain or loose'' chocolate. But dark chocolate makes up for its "lack" of milk with a higher cocoa content. Dark chocolate contains significantly more cocoa than other chocolates, and the process of making it must be adapted accordingly.

Harvesting the cocoa beans

The production of all types of chocolate begins with the harvesting of the ripe cocoa beans, which grow on a tree called the cacao tree - Theobroma cacao.

The cocoa tree is a cultivated plant that thrives in the tropics. It is up to 20 metres tall and is mainly found in Central and South America.

Cacao can reach a height of up to 10 metres when grown on plantations. The cocoa beans, which are hidden in the red or yellow melon-like fruits of the cocoa tree, are the most important for the chocolate industry. The fruits are up to 20 centimetres long and contain between 30 and 60 cocoa seeds or beans, which have a rather bitter taste. The cocoa tree bears its first fruit after five years of growth, and a single tree bears about 30 melon-shaped fruits in a year. It takes between 300 and 600 cocoa beans to make one kilogram of chocolate.

Fermentation

Once the melon fruits have been harvested, they are cut in half with machetes and the insides are scraped to extract the cocoa seeds and the fruit flesh, which serves as a reserve food for the seeds. The husks are removed as they are useless for chocolate making. The mixture of fruit flesh and seeds then goes through a fermentation or ''sweating'' process, which takes place in wooden boxes buried in the ground. During fermentation, the dense fruit flesh liquefies and drains away, leaving the seeds behind. Fermentation lasts between five and ten days, until all the fruit pulp has drained and the cocoa beans taste good enough.

Drying

Fermentation is followed by drying of the cocoa beans, which takes place in the sun or in ovens. This process is essential for the purification of the cocoa beans, as it is here that the beans are cleansed of all other impurities and impurities that have not been separated during fermentation and could interfere with the production of the chocolate or spoil its taste.

Roasting

The most important process for making dark chocolate is the next one, called roasting. The key to roasting is the temperature of the roasting process itself, which must be moderate to preserve the flavonoids in the seeds, which are beneficial to the body. Roasting also gives the cocoa beans a more pronounced aroma and reduces their acidity.

Making cocoa cake

Roasting is followed by rubbing the cocoa beans to extract their insides. The beans are crushed by hand, using stones or, increasingly, by machines. The hulls are blown off by fans to separate them from the flesh, which enters the next stage of chocolate production - grinding. In this stage, the shelled cocoa beans are ground into a thick, creamy paste, also known as cocoa paste or paste.

If the cocoa paste is heated, half of it is separated out as cocoa butter. The rest is called cocoa cake or cocoa paste, which is then used to make chocolate. Cocoa dough is therefore the purest form of dark chocolate, which is then used to make different types of dark chocolate using various additives, stabilisers and sweeteners. Of course, as the amount of additives increases, the flavonoid content decreases. To make good quality dark chocolate, it is important that just the right amount of all the other additives are added to the cocoa dough, and it is also important that they are added in the right order.

Dark chocolate is healthy precisely because of the special manufacturing process

The production of dark chocolate itself is a very complex process that must be properly managed and controlled, as this is the only way to achieve the best products that provide all the positive effects that chocolate has on the human body.

The roasting of the cocoa beans is certainly a key factor in the production of dark chocolate, as too high temperatures can cause the flavonoids and other active ingredients to break down, which would mean that the chocolate would lose its positive effect on the body.