Tech

Explore the Oaxaca chocolate shop where DIY Tech puts a high bar


“You can use a food blender now, but this one,” he said, pointing toward his Arenas-branded mill, “has more culture and history.”

From here, the chocolate is transferred to refining technology. In it, two wheels of fine granite revolve around a cylinder, slowly crushing and liquefying the paste on a granite base and combining it with the sweetener he used, like evaporated cocoa nectar or palm tree flower nectar. (“It’s like an endless ribbon,” he mused.) The refiner was made for chocolate, but it was by an Indian company, a direct descendant of “”wet grinder“Used to make foods such as dosas, idlis and masalas. This tool is a key to creating fancy chocolate. It took out the coarse crumbs, grinding away for hours until the crystals in the chocolate were ground to a level that could be measured in micrometers.

Next, it’s about cheap slow cookers. Michelena Gallardo uses it for annealing, a heating process that stabilizes the chocolate and keeps the chocolate from developing the white spots that some cheaper bars can develop.

“When you let it cool down after the refining process, the crystals are still all over the place,” he said. His tempering takes place in a custom spacer above his slow cooker, which for his purposes is essentially a waterless double boiler. The chocolatier can also “seed” the new batch with some of the older chocolates that have been aged.

“It’s like you put it in,” he said.

Finished Mamá Pacha chocolate bars emerge from their molds.

Photo: Citlali Fabián

Finally, before placing in the refrigerator to freeze, warm liquid chocolate will be poured into the mold. At this point, the buzzer appears. I mean the vibrating table, which shakes any air bubbles out of the chocolate. The “table” is a piece of wood, about the size of a thick album cover, with latches at each corner, the tops of which are attached to another board. Under the upper plank, is a small vibrating motor.

“What’s the word motive again?” I ask.

“It was a low quality massage chair spare part that I got on Amazon,” he replied. “I need a source of vibration.”

I raised my eyebrows, then asked how he came up with that hack.

“In Mexico, we are creative. You will see a lot of machines that have been tuned like this. It’s like the taxi drivers here bend the gear lever,” he said. My mouth might have been open unconsciously at that point, because I hadn’t mentioned my cab shift question to the chocolate guy.

“They bent it to fit a third person in the front seat.”


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