Part 1
What is couverture chocolate ?Nowadays, we have heard brands talking about couverture chocolate. But as a consumer, what does this mean?
Well, for this we need to go back to the roots , quite literally. Need to go back to see where chocolate comes from.
Chocolate comes from a fruit called cocoa pod( cocoa pod) . Just like any other fruit, cocoa pod does not grow everywhere. It needs particular temperature, soil and water and the most prominent place where these cocoa pods thrive is in Africa.
How does cocoa pods become chocolate, you may ask?
Well, once the cocoa pods are harvested, the pulp is extracted and dried. The pulp actually turn into cocoa beans ( similar to coffee beans) after the fermentation process. This is what gets exported to different parts of the world and it is from these beans that the chocolate is made.
So if chocolate is made from these beans, isn’t every chocolate the same?
No. It’s not. It is from now that chocolate gets its character. It is now that it can become a couverture or a compound.
Continued.....