Transforming Cacao Beans into Chocolate Bars

This chapter looks at the journey from cacao bean to the delicious, mouth-watering chocolate most of us crave. It takes us from harvesting the pods through the various stages in developing the flavor of the final product: fermenting, drying, and roasting the beans. These processes reduce the natural bitterness and astringency of the beans and produce the many volatile compounds such as polyphenols necessary for development of the full chocolate flavor. The chapter looks at the manufacture of chocolate and the processes involved in converting the beans into milk and dark chocolate. Finally, it looks at recent research into the importance of volatile compounds in the beans to the aroma and flavor of chocolate.