Oana – bean to bar chocolate maker

by admin on 12/10/2024

A part of Aona's chocolate collection

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We went to visit Oana in the city of Sfântu Gheorghe where we were met by her and her husband, who is running a bike workshop next to her chocolate workshop. While he was cleaning a chocolate tempering machine by melting the remaining chocolate with heat guns, Oana showed me how she makes chocolate.

Chocolate tempering machine Chocolate tempering machine

Spots of cocoa butter are visible on the surface of the chocolate if not done correctly, a phenomenon, which is called crystallisation. An interesting video about crystallisation can be watched here. Oana wants the surface to be shiny, smooth and brown, which she obtains by extracting liquid chocolate when it has the correct temperature. She was using an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature of the liquid chocolate.

I’ve been to three other chocolate makers in the county of Hargitha in Romania, one in Norway and another one in Spain, but Oana is a the only one who makes chocolate from cocoa beans, called bean to bar and she imports the beans from Peru and Nicaragua. This means that she needs to process the cocoa beans before she can use them to make chocolate.

Quote: Bean to bar chocolate is chocolate that is made from scratch by the same producer, starting from the raw cacao beans and ending with the finished chocolate bars and treats. This process allows the chocolate maker to control every aspect of the chocolate making, such as roasting, grinding, conching, tempering, and moulding. Bean to bar chocolate is often more flavourful, nuanced, and ethical than mass-produced chocolate. It reflects the artistry and craftsmanship of the maker and the quality and origin of the cacao. Unquote.

She roasts the cocoa beans in an oven to develop flavour, kill bacteria and loosen shells, next she’s cracking the shells and blowing them away, leaving the nibs behind. Next, she grinds the nibs into a thick paste known as “cocoa liquor”.

Grating cocoa butter above melted chocolate and mixing them together. Grating cocoa butter above melted chocolate and mixing them together. Mixing liquid chocolate with tahini and salt Mixing liquid chocolate with tahini and salt

She melted cocoa butter and poured it into a small tank with liquid chocolate. Next, she poured crushed tahini on top of the mixture, finally she added a little salt. Afterward, she stirred everything together to make a chocolate paste.

Thereafter, Oana inserted a knife in another chocolate bath, put it in a fridge and took it out after some time and found that the liquid chocolate needed to stay longer in the heater. Only for a demo, she poured the chocolate in a mould, scraped off excess liquid chocolate and shook the form to get rid of bubbles. Due to limited time, she would put pistachio in the liquid chocolate later.

Pouring liquid chocolate in a form and turning it upside down Pouring liquid chocolate in a form and turning it upside down Chocolate bars on pistachio with and without packaging Chocolate bars on pistachio with and without packaging

I got to taste the chocolate with pistachio, and it was delicious.

Oana also showed me how she folds paper around her chocolates, and she made it seem easy.

Folding paper around a chocolate bar Folding paper around a chocolate bar Hot chocolate and ceremonial cocoa Hot chocolate and ceremonial cocoa

Her company is called Kokowa and I asked her if it was her last name. Instead, it’s a pun on cocoa and Wanna, her name in Romanian.

In addition to being an excellent chocolate maker, she’s also good at punning. She’s also producing various types of peanut butter as shown below, they are called peanutter and pawnutter where the last one is peanut butter for dogs. In addition, she’s selling hazel butter as hazelnutter, almond butter as almonutter, cashewbutter, caju in Romanian, as cajunutter.

Peanut butter collection Peanut butter collection

The Krausz chocolate company is located some distance from this one.

Some of the hens at this farm

Place: Csíkszentdomokos or Sândominic

Several times when we went to visit someone, I thought that we had arrived at the wrong place. Having arrived in a village and turned left onto a grassy cul-de-sac, I thought that my driver had made a mistake for a change. Instead, having called someone in Hungarian, he reversed his car and parked it on the opposite road. Next, we walked to where we had just been and entered a gate where a young couple were waiting for us. They were Norbert and Tímea, a married couple in their 30s and their young daughter.

Their house and the chicken farm were located next to each other, and both were fenced in to prevent the hens from running away and hindering foxes from entering the courtyard. The house and the surrounding property originally belonged to Nobert’s parents, and he had inherited it.

They had 5 goats, but they sold them because a male goat was aggressive when Tímea was pregnant, and she was afraid of getting hurt.

They stayed 7 years in the UK, working in hotels as cleaners in Brighton, learning the language and having a good time although they weren’t satisfied with the food they were eating. Both prefer a slow life and not earning a lot of money, meaning that they went back to where they came from, that is to the farm where Norbert grew up.

They don’t throw away food, they want to know where their food comes from, and they buy honey from local beekeepers. They have planted apple trees, which give shade to the chickens, and they also eat the fallen apples. They make their own bread, and they receive leftovers from some restaurants, but they aren’t allowed to do dumpster diving. The parents of Tímea have pigs, from which they can get meat, they buy milk from one of their neighbours.

They started raising chickens as a hobby, then they increased the number of chickens to 400, while now they have about 250. They have been raising chickens for 4 years and they are still learning how to do it. They can’t get advice on raising more than 200 chickens even though they behave very differently from 20. They buy 100 chickens at a time, costing about 1000 euros, but they can’t see which sex they have upon arrival at their farm. Anyway, the male ones are slaughtered and eaten when they are recognized. In fact, Tímea and Norbert kindly invited us into their house where they served us lunch consisting of soup made from the meat of some of their male chickens.

Foxes are trying to attack the chickens and sometimes they kill several at a time. Their three dogs stay with the chickens and that’s why they don’t have traps for the foxes. In addition, they don’t hunt.

Norbert works as an electrician at Csíki Sör brewery , but he doesn’t drink beer, he’s very occupied with fixing the machines, though. Tímea stays home with their daughter.

In addition to cereals, they only give the chickens vitamin D and calcium. A young female veterinarian is very helpful even though she knows very little about chickens, and she can identify what they need. The main diet of the chickens is cereals.

The house where the hens are sleeping at night

The hens may peck each other, if they see blood, they will keep on pecking. At dusk, everyone goes inside the small house. Next, they close the door to keep foxes outside. They stay inside at night on wooden racks, some of them stay in a corner of the house. The chickens produce about 1000 eggs a week. They have adjacent houses with straw on the floor where the chickens lay eggs and their owners pick the eggs twice a day. They have a separate house for the youngest chickens, that is up to 1 month.

Water tubes

In winter, they give the chickens hot water every 2 hours, while in summer they can drink from tubes with holes.

After lunch, we went to their egg house a few minutes’ walk from their house. It was located next to the food shop.

Egg house where customers can buy eggs at any time

The egg house was called Szapona, which was a bad nickname of Norbert’s father. The egg house has a fridge with max 10°C and people can pay with cash. The egg house is monitored with 2 cameras. Of course, they can’t compete with commercial chicken farmers and the egg prices of this couple are somewhat higher than the shop prices. Some customers pay too little or too much, but, in general, it’s averaged out over time
Some people just want eggs, and they don’t care about where the eggs come from.

There is a great demand for eggs at Christmas and Easter.

The price of chicken feed has risen substantially after Covid, and they have been thinking about giving up raising chickens, but they keep on doing it. In fact, Norbert wants to be a full-time farmer and both want to raise rabbits for meat production.

Indian ducks

They have Indian ducks for fun, and they eat snails, while their eggs and meat are inedible.

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