Everyone has heard of Belgian and Swiss chocolate…. In Annecy there is also an address well-known by chocolate lovers, it’s called: “Chocolaterie du Pont Neuf”.
This week eight IFALPES students had the opportunity to visit this Chocolaterie, welcomed by Master Chocolatier named Rémi Lateltin. After browsing around the shop our mouths were already watering. We were ready for the workshop.
To know how this wonderful thing is made, the steps to create chocolate were explained to us:
- The mixing: The cocoa mass is mixed with all the raw materials to obtain the pastry.
- The Conching: The cocoa beans are ground with stone rollers until they become a paste known as cocoa mass or cocoa liquor. This pure, unrefined form of chocolate contains both cocoa solids (the chocolatey part!) and cocoa butter (the natural fat present in the bean).Cocoa butter can be extracted from the cocoa mass with a hydraulic press.
- The Tempering: the controlled process of raising, lowering and raising the temperature of the chocolate to form exactly the right kind of crystals.
- The Moulding : The final step in making a finished chocolate bar is pouring it into a mould. The melted chocolate is simply poured into plastic bar-shaped moulds and agitated to remove any air bubbles. Larger chocolate makers will have machines and conveyors that deposit exactly the right amount of chocolate into each mould, but many smaller manufacturers still do this part by hand.
- The cutting: The chocolate is cut and ready to be shaped.
After the visit, a well-known Master Chocolatier named Rémi Lateltin presented us with all his different chocolate creations and we tasted them.
Basically there are three different chocolates that are made in this chocolaterie. One is milk chocolate that is called Malao, the other one are black chocolates but Annam is a bitter chocolate instead to the Alto el Sol that is a basic one.
The Master Chocolatier is not only a chocolate maker, he also makes confectioneries and candies. We tested two different confectioneries: caramel inside milk chocolate and white chocolate with passion fruit. Sometimes he has special order for a wedding or a birthday so he has to cook special creations like a well-designed rugby ball or wedding chocolates.
The tasting was really interesting, first the students ate the milk chocolate, then the black bitter chocolate and in the end the black chocolate. We also ate the confectionery; we were all surprised by their taste. It was delicious.
