Roasting cacao is one of the most important step for the craft chocolate maker.
Big cacao industry roasts with high temperature to remove all the problems of poor cocoa beans, cutting off all the worst flavors and to make the chocolate palatable. After that, they add sugar, vanilla, aromas and that’s all. People will choose the chocolate just for its bitterness, not for other. For us Bean to bar makers, roasting means to exalt. The craft chocolate goal is to develop flavors, not to make the aromas flat.
Actually, for us, toasting cocoa means enhancing. In fact, in artisan chocolate, the goal is not to flatten, but to develop.
Cacao for bean to bar makers is full of notes, aroma, flavors, stories and hard work. Toasting is necessary to enhance the aromatic bouquet that the producer wants to impart to the final product. It’s their signature.
A good dark chocolate is rarely bitter.
A good dark chocolate is made with premium cacao, roasted with capacity, worked with patience.
Nothing else is needed. Cocoa already gives us everything by itself.