1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:I wonder... Did they set out to deceive? Or did they think that once they started doing bean to bar for real it would taste just like valrhona, and be easy to make?
i have a wet grinder and have tried grinding nibs a few times. You can get pretty smooth chocolate after two or three days in the grinder. But I agree with the math in the article that production of so many varieties in so little space would not be possible. And white chocolate? Doesn't that take even more equipment to purify the cocoa butter?
It looks like they had all the gadgetry to play with making bean to bar chocolate... I'd guess they must have overpromised very early on and melted some Valrhona feves to cover... then they were stuck in a position of having to be equal to or better than Valrhona after people tasted, liked, and raved about that batch. Given that, I can imagine a snowball effect with lots of good intentions getting ground into fine paste under the weight of the earlier deceptions.
