When people say they’re going to make something "from scratch," they usually mean skipping the brownie mix and pulling out a dusty cookbook instead. They don’t typically mean hand-grinding their own grain to make bread.

“I used to have this grain mill, I ... clamped it onto my futon. I lived in a tiny studio apartment, and I’d be like grinding grain to make bread myself, because I wanted to do it from scratch a certain way,” said William Marx, founder of Madison company Wm. Chocolate.

This commitment to go back to the most basic is what led Marx to leave his job at Epic Systems and start his own bean-to-bar chocolate company.

Most chocolate makers simplify things and start from raw chocolate. Bean-to-bar is a movement among chocolatiers to make chocolate directly from the cacao bean. It’s a lot of work — it takes Marx four days to make a batch of chocolate — but the result is a distinct and ethical bar.

Marx’s journey into the artisan chocolate world began with some extra time on his hands and a desire to make more natural food.

After earning a degree in history and classics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he moved to New York to pursue a master’s. After graduation, he moved to upstate New York and worked for his cousin creating a music sharing website.

“It was my first time living on my own, in my own apartment. Nobody in my way, nobody in my kitchen,” Marx said. “And I kind of got into making things from scratch.”

Marx started reading books about the negative effects of processed food and additives. This added to his motivation to “go off the grid a little bit and start doing it myself.”

Marx went far off the grid. He made his own bread with a grain mill. He experimented with corn tortillas by buying corn from a bird feed shop.

His first scratch experiment with chocolate was a simple combination of cocoa powder (“Which is sort of sacrilege, now I know”) and cocoa butter for his mom on Mother’s Day. He began researching online to see how he could make better and more natural chocolate.

He knew that from a business standpoint, chocolate had the most potential and the ability “to get more appreciation from people than, ‘Try this coarse, old fashioned bread I made.’”

Marx then moved back to Madison in order to be closer to friends and family, and took a job in quality assurance at Epic.

Meanwhile, he kept experimenting with chocolate-making at home. He would mold chocolate upstairs and run the chocolate to the basement to place it on cooling racks, then run back upstairs and mold some more. His “molds” at that point were primitive; he used cookie sheets to make massive two pound bars.

When he wrapped the bars, he marked them with a simple “Wm.” stamp, his initials. Although it wasn’t his intention, this would become the name of the company as people began to recognize the Wm. Chocolate name.

Learning how to make chocolate was not always a smooth process. It's a temperamental and delicate process, affected by slight changes in temperature and easily taking on the aromas of its environment. There were lots of little adjustments, but one of the biggest goofs of the experimental stage left a crunchy surprise. Cacao beans come with stones and debris that has to be sorted out.

“I even made a batch once — fortunately, this was just a house-batch for me — and I bit into a piece of it and there was like a rock," Marx said. "And this was a finished chocolate bar."

Marx was learning and refining his technique, but couldn’t sell his chocolate without producing it in a commercial kitchen. His golden ticket into the chocolate industry came when Jonny Hunter, culinary director of Underground Food Collective, offered him kitchen space.

In order to really invest in the business, Marx quit his job at Epic in mid-April. Now Marx can turn beans into about 200 bars a week.

The majority of cacao beans are grown in West Africa. The beans come from football-shaped pods, surrounded by white pulp. The pods are opened and the pulp and beans are removed, covered and left to ferment.

Usually, the beans are then shipped to companies that turn the beans into raw chocolate, which is then sold to chocolatiers, melted and crafted into chocolates. Instead, Marx buys raw beans and takes over production from there.

First, Marx has to separate the shells of the cacao beans from the inner nibs, which will become the chocolate. He puts the beans through a grinder to crush the shells. Then, he uses a sorting device hooked up to a shop vac, blowing air to separate the lighter shells from the heavier nibs.

Next, Marx takes the nibs and slightly grinds them. After heading the beans to about 140 degrees, Marx adds cocoa butter and sugar to the mix. He didn’t want to use white refined sugar, so instead uses sun-dried sugar cane juice from the Himalayas. If he’s making milk chocolate, he adds the milk powder, which he makes himself.

The mixture is then placed in a refining machine, a stone drum that grinds the beans for three or four days. This leaves the chocolate smooth and grainless.

Then the chocolate must be tempered, a process of heating and cooling that gives chocolate its gloss and snap. For this, Marx spreads a portion of the chocolate onto porcelain stones, to cool and agitate it.

After this, the chocolate is molded into bars, wrapped in freezer paper and slapped with a sticker that details the ingredients (cocoa beans, cocoa butter and sugar), the origin and the flavor notes.

Cacao beans, much like coffee beans, can have strikingly different flavors based on soils, cacao trees, fermentation and roasting processes. Some have notes of jam, honey or fruit. Marx’s Bolivian bean bars have notes of banana and butterscotch, while his bars made from Ghanaian beans are reminiscent of coffee and wood smoke.

Marx includes tasting notes on his labels, emphasizing that this is just a place for people to start when exploring a new culinary territory.

“(If) I think it tastes like orange marmalade, a little bit, I’m not saying you’re going to bite into it and say, “Yeah I‘m going to spread this on toast and be done,’ ... but it’s got a little bit of floral fruit thing going on,” Marx said.

Initially nervous that customers would not be able to distinguish between the bars, Marx got immediate feedback on the distinct flavors.

Taste is not the only benefit of the bean-to-bar process. Sixty percent of cacao comes from West Africa, where child labor has become a growing concern. A 2015 report from Tulane University found two million children working in hazardous cacao production in West Africa. At this point, major chocolate companies can’t guarantee their cacao is not made with child labor, according to Green America, a nonprofit advocating for ethical consumerism.

“You start reading around a bit about the chocolate industry, and it gets pretty dark pretty fast. When you buy quality beans from reputable people, you’re supporting people getting paid two to four times what even fair trade minimums can be,” Marx said.

Wm. Chocolate is now available at four locations in Madison, and Marx will sell his products at various farmers' markets this summer, including the Monroe Street and Bodega markets. Marx hopes to open an online store in the next month or two.

In the long process, Marx’s favorite part is just what you’d expect it to be.

“I love when I come in once a day to check on the drums, because I always taste it,” Marx said.

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