Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S'more

The definitive guide to making chocolate from scratch, written by the team behind San Francisco’s Dandelion Chocolate, one of the most respected craft chocolate makers in the world. This book covers the entire process from sourcing cacao beans to producing finished bars, truffles, and pastries.

Why Consider This One

If your interest goes deeper than working with pre-made couverture and you want to understand chocolate from the very beginning, this is the book. Dandelion Chocolate explains how to select beans, roast them, crack and winnow the nibs, grind them into chocolate, and temper the result into beautiful bars. The approach is rigorous but never intimidating. They share the hacks and workarounds they developed in their own factory, including using household tools like hair dryers and rolling pins.

The book also includes 30 recipes from Dandelion’s pastry kitchen for using your finished chocolate in brownies, hot chocolate, truffles, and s’mores. There is a thoughtful section on the ethics of cacao sourcing and the relationships between makers and growers.

What to Expect

A substantial 368-page hardcover with beautiful photography documenting every stage of the bean-to-bar process. This is more ambitious than a standard home chocolate book. You will need to source raw cacao beans (the book helps with this) and invest some time in learning the craft. But the instructions are clear enough that a dedicated beginner can produce real chocolate at home. Best suited for the curious maker who wants to understand the full journey of chocolate, not just the final decorating step.