Dandelion Chocolate

by Patricia Chang Oct 28, 2016, 4:18pm PDT

Bags of unprocessed beans
Beans are sorted by hand Workers look out for random detritus like pieces of twine or rocks mixed into the beans
Dandelion is discerning They have a loss of 10%, higher than other comparable companies, because they discard cracked or defective beans
Beans are cracked After roasting, beans are cracked to separate the shells from the nibs
Beans are roasted A reengineered coffee roaster roasts the beans low and slow
The melangers Cocoa nibs and sugar are ground together until fine, over 24 hours
Melanged chocolate is molded into bars
A block of untempered chocolate After melanging, the chocolate is stored in blocks until it's time to be tempered and turned into bars
Blocks of chocolate awaiting their transformation
Chopped blocks The blocks are broken up before tempering
Tempering The chocolate is heated and cooled to exact specifications to make it shelf stable, give it a nice sheen, and the proper texture.
After tempering, it's time for molding The tempered chocolate is poured into molds
Cooling The molded chocolate is briefly cooled
Unmolded bars, ready for wrapping
Foiling Bars are wrapped in foil by hand
Next up: Paper A retro wrapping machine from the 1950s applies paper
Wrapped bars for sale in the café

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