Pump Street Chocolate

Brown Bread - 40% White Chocolate with bread

A new variant in the world of chocolates: malty mixture of bread pieces and sweet toffee-like, white Chocolate. Made the cocoa butter from Pump Street Chocolate itself, pressed from the Ecuadorian cocoa beans by Samuel von Rutte of Hacienda Limon.

The family-owned company from Pump Street in Orford, Suffolk in England is run by father and daughter. They are both career changers and taught themselves both how to bake and how to make Chocolate. They have studied cocoa and its processing extensively and source only the very best qualities of cocoa. They pay special attention to the harvesting and subsequent fermentation of the beans.

The cocoa for this Chocolate comes from the Hacienda Limon, in the province of Los Rios in Ecuador. It is a so-called Heirloom Cacao, a historic crop. The plantation is located in the Guayas Basin, one of the most fertile areas on the Pacific coast. The region is ideally suited for the cultivation of cacao. Unfortunately, most of the original cacao varieties in Mexico and Central America have been replaced by higher yielding but lower flavoring varieties. The CCN51 cacao variety yields four times as much, is difficult to ferment, and thus has little flavor

Today, 10 cacao varieties have been found in Ecuador that trace back to the fine flavor variety Arriba. Very few cocoa farmers grow it today. The owner of the plantation, Samuel of Rutte, planted 157 hectares of Arriba cacao at the beginning of the millennium, which he got from the collection of a gene database. This was established in the 50-ies by the Rockefeller Foundation. He became familiar with the harvesting, fermentation and drying processes and learned the essential processes needed to achieve the desired flavor profile  

In 2014, he and his plantation were awarded Heirloom Cacao Preservation (HCP) status, which very few cacao farmers receive. The goal of HCP is to find and preserve fine flavour cacao. Heirloom cacao is considered the diamond among the cocoa beans.

The 60% Rye Crumb, Milk and Sea Salt Chocolate is one of our favorites.