Laurent Gerbaud Chocolatier in Brussels, Belgium

Laurent Gerbaud, Owner

Origins

Before the shop, I went to China, and the trip changed my taste for life. Their desserts had much less sugar. I lost the taste for sweets when I was there. It was really complicated when I came back. Even my fellow chocolatiers were telling me there was not enough sugar in my recipes, but I just kept making this; same ingredients, same approach. It was complicated and not so well received at the beginning, and now it’s completely trendy. I was too much in advance at that time.

Company Mission

I give classes each week. People make their own chocolate bars with great chocolate and fresh ingredients: fruits, nuts, ginger, yuzu. But before they start, I have them taste a piece of industrial chocolate from the store. Maybe they don’t mind at the beginning, but then they make their own really good chocolate. They taste really good chocolate. Then I ask them to taste the industrial chocolate at the end, and they hate it. I want to give people appreciation for great chocolate. I want them to have fun. I want to build the community. That’s the philosophy of the classes and the shop.

Signature Products

The Gare aux Noisette (hazelnut praline with roasted cashew nuts), is something really distinctive. We are always sold out. People are upset when it’s sold out. It’s really the idea of addiction, simple taste, not much sweetness. Then we have Pralines with nuts. People really love nuts – the pistachio, pecan, the sesame. There’s another one that’s super nice with roasted buckwheat. The DNA is really spices, fruit, nuts and dark chocolate.

Now we produce ice cream ourselves with the same ingredients as the chocolate: cacao, hazelnut, pistachio cream. It’s all the same as the pralines. We use the same philosophy with very little sugar. We work with a consultant to make the recipes. He has his computer with the software for ice-cream making, so we get the right balance. As with the chocolate we are always looking for the right water balance. The more moisture, the better for the texture, the melting and so on, but shorter for the shelf life. For the ice cream, we watch for the fat, because the fat makes it stiffer, so you cannot scoop it. There is a limit where adding more pistachio, more chocolate, more hazelnut is just adding food cost but not taste. It was interesting to work with this software. The guy helped us to make the basic recipes for the sorbet, the ice cream, the vegan ice cream, the ice cream with nuts, ice cream with citrus and so on. We did a nice one with Mandarin and bespoke chili. We did some with olive. We have a black sesame that’s super good.

Equipment ‘Must-Haves’

The production chocolate machine. If you want an efficient production, you need a good enrobing machine, a good melter, a good cutter. You cannot process properly without that. This we buy from Italy. You have to choose pretty quickly if you want to do traditional enrobing or molding, because it’s not the same equipment. We do enrobing, so we only have a little bit of mold for holidays. Molds are pretty expensive. You need to store them and you need a lot of them, so it’s quite a big investment. If you work with molds, try to do one mold with one shape that you can personalize with either some coloring or food or nuts. But I prefer the coating, because it can do a super-thin layer. If you do molding, you can go higher in terms of production, because you can buy a one-shot machine. The cost is $3,000 for the tool, then $15 for each mold, so up to $5,000 altogether for a mold. If you are targeting to make a bigger targeting production, you can make molds. But make a choice that works for you.

Production Tip

Focus on your own personality, your own taste, whatever it is. Don’t make something too complicated. Do good material, good tempering and freshness. That’s it. You can do good chocolate in mass production. But most of the large manufacturers, if they do large production, they have to change the recipe to feed the machine. Because they are making so much, they have to freeze the chocolate, so they have to reduce the moisture, because the moisture expands. If you have too much, the praline cracks, so they have to change the recipes; the raw ingredients and the sugar content because of the mass production. Also, most of the time, they work from August to December and then they put people on unemployment, so people here get paid partly from the company and partly from the government.

Future Plans

I asked my team before Covid if we could move the production to a larger location. The only place with an affordable rent was in the suburb of Brussels in an industrial area. The staff told me they would get depressed and quit within six months. I cannot produce alone, so one of the next steps is to buy a place with bigger storage in downtown Brussels, with a small office that I could transform into a small apartment, so when I stop working, I can have a pied a terre in Brussels and go live in the countryside.

One project is to have a better range of seasonal products for things like Christmas, Valentine, Easter. When I was an apprentice, I didn’t like making Easter eggs. It was really boring, so I avoided it for many years. But people want it. We now have a very nice Easter collection, a nice Advent calendar, something nice for St. Valentine. I also work with a friend who is an illustrator. She makes very nice boxes for Easter. We have something that doesn’t really exist in other countries. It’s called St. Nicholas, the sixth of December. As a kid you receive Mandarin, Candies, Speculoos, chocolate, and it has also become the corporate gift that you cannot avoid. We sell small bags between five and ten Euros. As a boss, if you do not offer anything at St. Nicholas, you’ve lost. Forget about your speech at Christmas.

Photos by Caroline Mays

For more info, visit www.chocolatsgerbaud.be

(This article appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)