Uncovering the magic of Soma’s chocolate
Do kids still separate their Halloween candy? Or only uptight kids like me?
When I was a youngling, we went to trick-or-treat in the rich folks’ neighbourhood (or so I perceived the middleclass area, believing that anyone who owns a house must be rich). The best part of the night was dumping my loot onto the living room carpet and prioritizing it. Chocolate bars were at the top, non-bar chocolate items, candies and chips. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups earned their own incomparable category.
I didn’t know at the time, and wouldn’t have cared, that much of my Halloween chocolate tasted mostly of sugar, or that the meagre quantity of cocoa bean in the mix likely came from horribly exploited regions in West Africa.
And while I’ve grown to appreciate good chocolate, I never truly understood what was involved in its production until spending a day in a chocolate factory.
Everyone keeps asking me if it’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. So let’s dismiss that illusion right now.
The Soma Chocolatemaker’s production facility in Toronto is on a tree-lined residential street, doors unlocked, a front wall of glass so anyone can see inside. It’s not secretive.
Owner David Castellan does produce some fantabulous confections. Soma just won seven medals at the International Chocolate Awards, including plain bar (Porcelana), flavoured bar (Stratus, which incorporates lees from Stratus winery), truffles (peach magnolia, Thai stick) and a gold for best in show.
But inside Castellan’s workshop, there are no Oompa Loompas, just the boss and one other employee, and it takes a lot of work to transform cacao beans into chocolate.
Entering from the chilly, autumn air into the warm embrace of musty, cocoa-scented oxygen is like shifting from waking reality into a dream. It’s that stark.
We roast 120 kilograms of Venezuelan beans, me scooping as Castellan stands on a ladder to reach the top of the machine, pouring the material into the hopper. Once gas flames heat the inside of the sphere to 150 C, the beans are released into the cauldron. Castellan opens the windows but soon the room is filled with smoke, ushering us outside. However, the roasting process can turn on a dime. The $1,000 worth of beans inside can overroast very quickly. So we have to stay close to taste them every few minutes. They’re bitter, but with delicate flavours hidden behind the astringent first impression.
“For fine chocolate, you’re trying to keep the temperature lower to preserve some flavours that occur in the bean,” says Castellan.
“With cheaper chocolate, you’re not as worried about that.”
The beans will go through another half-dozen steps — including the winnower, the grinder, the ball mill and the conch — before becoming sweet chocolate.
At every stage, imprecision threatens the stability and flavour. Unlike sausages, chocolate’s appeal remains undiminished by seeing it made.
On the other hand, let’s not be too quick to dismiss the idea of chocolate as magical. In the same stage of childhood cognitive development, we’re encouraged to accept candy as currency while believing in witches, vampires and Jedis, or the fantasy that our parents are infallible, our future’s without limit and all love will be unconditional. As we grow up and those other illusions crumble under the pressure of adulthood, maybe there’s value in the belief that chocolate flows in rivers. The chocolate room “How are you at multi-tasking?” asks Dawn Nita, senior production manager at the Soma store on King St.
She’s about to fire up the enrobing machine, to coat a batch of salt and pepper buttercrunch cookies in chocolate. But first she has to decide how much to trust me. I go through this every week.
The enrober is actually a conveyor belt hooked up to a tempering machine, which keeps the chocolate in motion and heated at 29 C.
Nita chooses to trust me with sprinkling Maldon salt over the cookies and to operate the switch for the fan, which blows excess liquid chocolate back into the machine. I hit the switch and nothing happens. Nita spends the next 10 minutes cursing the machine as she fixes the button.
When it gets moving, we set to work coating the disks of butter toffee in Costa Rican milk chocolate, sprinkling a bit of salt and walnut on each. It’s hard to keep an eye on the rainfall of chocolate without being hypnotized by its beauty. Nita shows me how to slide a sheet of 12 onto a tray to cool and, after I don’t screw up the first one, trusts me to do the rest.
“Can you handle a longer batch?” she asks. There are a few hundred cookies to finish. She’s not trying to rush me, but the chocolate is only good for so long at this temperature, before needing to be cooled and tempered again. And we already lost time to the broken button. I nod yes and we power through until a stack of dark, glossy cookies are piled on the table.
When they’re all put away, Nita brings me a cooled sample to taste, as if she didn’t see the cookie I snuck when her back was turned. Email mintz.corey@gmail.com and follow @coreymintz on Twitter and instagram.com/coreymintz.
Recipe: Amaretti
These are my favourite cookies ever. Not being a baker, I assumed they were complicated and I was so happy to be dead wrong. 500 g (1.1 lbs), about 2.5 cups (750 mL) whole blanched almonds 350 g (.77 lbs), about 1.5 cups (375 mL) sugar 3 egg whites splash of vanilla extract splash of rum lots of icing sugar Preheat oven to 160 C. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
Place almonds and sugar in food processor and grind to a fine powder.
In a large mixing bowl, whip egg whites to soft peaks and fold into the almond mixture, along with a few drops of vanilla and/or rum.
Spoon mixture or roll into small balls and place on baking tray (this is the point where experienced bakers twist them into s-shapes or something delightful but I’m happy with lumpy mounds). Dust heavily with icing sugar.
Bake until lightly golden, about 10 minutes. Makes about 30 cookies.
3 Star Tested by Corey Mintz