Megan Giller - Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution: The Origins, the Makers, and the Mind-Blowing Flavors

To Marcus

By Michael Laiskonis, Creative Director, Institute of Culinary Education

Making chocolate is easy. Making good chocolate is extremely difficult.

Most chocolate makers I know share this sentiment to some degree. While a bar of chocolate is indeed the sum of its ingredients and its manufacturing steps, the art and science of crafting that bar also rely on a subtractive process, much like a sculptor liberating beauty from an uncarved block.

The chocolate maker starts with an unroasted cocoa bean an edible diamond in-the-rough paring away the superfluous to reveal its essential nature. The resulting flavors are an expression of the beans time, place, and heritage, and even a bit of the makers personality. Compounding this already complex task is the skill needed to preserve the taste of the bean its bitter edges intact and then steer the process toward showing that beans potential. Its a skill that relies on experience, endless testing and tasting, and some intuition. The more I learn about chocolate, the more I realize how much I dont know, which is both wonderfully satisfying and endlessly frustrating. Alas, the word craft itself implies an endless pursuit of elusive perfection.

This is the driving force behind craft chocolate, and this book is the first attempt at chronicling this movement in real time. With a connoisseurs obsession and an investigators precision, Megan Giller has created a road map for chocolate lovers to better navigate this brave new world of small-scale producers, their processes, and the delicious diversity of their products. Megans own story is like many others a happenstance tasting bore a life-changing revelation: not all chocolate is the same. It can be different. What separates craft chocolate from the industrial goes far beyond mere aesthetics and into the philosophical. Craft chocolate embraces the variability of an agricultural product that has subtle differences from one origin to the next, and from harvest to harvest. Each batch each bar embodies the cocoa beans individuality.

As we consumers seek to broaden our palates with the flavors of fine chocolate, we also care deeply about where its from, whats in it, and how its made. Insight, which this book offers in great depth, enhances the tasting experience. Ethical sourcing and transparency of the process, too, are increasingly important. One might argue that this homegrown movement and its followers are helping to shift the entire chocolate industry, influencing how the largest chocolate companies approach, or at least market, their own products. This new era of chocolate is about hunting down the best raw material, respecting its sense of place, and sharing the untold stories of the farmers who make it possible.

As we trace the story of chocolate from its wild origins to its spread across the globe, we discover transformations and refinements along the way. There is romance in the idea that the current craft movement is about taking chocolate back into the realm of a hands-on, artisan aesthetic. Yet this movement is rather a leap forward in chocolates evolution that simply builds and improves upon its past. As you read the profiles within, you realize no two chocolate makers are alike and thus no two chocolate bars are alike. There is no right or wrong way to make chocolate, and I firmly believe there is little bad chocolate to be had. These personal styles and the strong opinions that guide them ensure an endless opportunity for new chocolate experiences.

Among the many talented experts that Megan introduces in this book is Ed Seguine (former researcher for Guittard and Mars and now an independent adviser). I once attended a panel discussion on the current state of craft chocolate, where he sat as an authoritative anchor of the industry. Regarding the very serious business of tasting fine chocolate, Ed reminded us of one simple truth: If we arent having fun, were doing it wrong. The best chocolate in the world is simply the one you enjoy most. With this book in hand, I encourage you to taste, taste, taste all that this movement has to offer. The best chocolate is always out there, waiting to be discovered.

I confess: in the eighth grade, I wrote a poem about chocolate cake. My mom pulled the cake out of the oven, and it was just so, I dont know, gooey, sitting there, wafting cocoa scents that would tempt an ascetic. All evidence of that poem has now been destroyed, though it took a lot longer to realize the silliness of my stanzas than it did to scarf a few slices of cake.

My mom didnt seem surprised by the poem. After all, I was the person who, at three years old, invented an ingenious new way to lick the batter out of the bowl: by putting it on my head, with my tongue stretched out to catch the chocolate as the aluminum rotated (spatial intelligence was never my strong suit). After Id lacquered my hair with batter, my mother threw me into the bath. Needless to say, I ended up with a mouthful of soapy water instead of endless cocoa.

Flash-forward a few decades. I spotted a small chocolate shop in Portland, Oregon, and just had to check it out. When I walked in, though, my heart almost stopped. The walls brimmed with packages so brightly colored they almost bounced off the shelves, jars of sweet-looking nectar beckoned, and a few fulfilled faces sat sipping something dark and dreamy.

Cacao. Drink chocolate, the stores sign said.

Yes, I replied.

On that first visit I timidly bought a bar from the huge collection, judging it solely on its pretty wrapper. Are you sure you dont want to try anything? the salesperson asked as I retreated into the cool evening.

That night, after devouring all of that delectable chocolate in my Airbnb apartment, I couldnt sleep. And it wasnt from a sugar high. This stuff was different from the Snickers bars and chocolate hearts that I was used to. It was darker, more flavorful, more real. Id had enough of truffles and candies with creams and fillings. It turns out they mask the real treat: the chocolate.

But what did the guy at Cacao mean when he offered to let me try something?

I couldnt stay away for long. The next day found me waiting at the store when it opened at 10 a.m. My new best friend, co-owner Aubrey Lindley, an effusive, brown-haired 30-something, walked me through bite after bite of chocolate. This 75 percent Madagascar from Patric is really fruity, he told me as he handed me a square.