Cocoa delights

Hot chocolate, chocolate frappé, chocolate liégeois, chocolate soufflé, chocolate mousse, chocolate candies… all this chocolate, in all its forms, comes of course from La Manufacture de Chocolat Alain Ducasse, located rue de La Roquette in Paris. But what is really going on in this gourmet den?

Big jute bags arrive from all over the world – or rather from all the big cocoa plantations: from Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela) but also from India, Madagascar and Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia). In these bags, the cocoa beans arrive because there lies the specificity of the Chocolate Factory: to get supplies from the best producers and to make the whole transformation process, from the bean to the finished product (bars, candies, pastes, etc.).

These beans are then sorted, roasted and coarsely crushed. This produces the grits (which can already be used in some recipes) which are then passed through the millstones of a grinder. This step produces a granular and slightly acidic paste which is then mixed with sugar and possibly other ingredients depending on the recipe. To give it its smoothness, the chocolate is then “conched”, i.e. passed through a conche which shakes it regularly and for a long time (the process lasts between 10 and 48 hours). Finally, it is “tabbed” on a marble work surface to cool before being poured into molds.

All this long and painstaking work has one goal: to create chocolates with strong, sometimes even brutal personalities. It takes patience and a love of craftsmanship. It also takes a lot of creativity to develop new recipes that take you on a journey through a world of cocoa delights.