New art gallery offers product line for those with discriminating tastes

Hers, at least.

Peterson, 30, has just completed a five-month chocolatier course.

“I’ve always loved chocolate,” she says.

And now she makes her own artisan creations in the kitchen of the art gallery she and her family opened earlier this month.

Peterson’s is located at 1925 Main St. It is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Petersons — Alyssa and her husband, Davey, plus his parents, Dave and Barbara Peterson, and brother, Shawn — want the gallery to be a gathering place in downtown Baker City.
(Davey, Shawn and Alyssa all grew up here.)

At the rear of the gallery they’ve placed tables and chairs, and offer coffee, tea and fancy hot chocolate.

Plus chocolate treats, of course — truffles, solid chocolate hearts, butter creams, caramels and more.

And melting chocolate to cover creamy vanilla butter creams is the perfect remedy for these gray, drizzly days.

Eating the creamy morsels is a good cure, too.

During her months of studying chocolate and developing five signature recipes, Alyssa has learned a lot about how chocolate works.

It’s temperamental.

Take the process called tempering.

To begin, she dips a metal bowl into a box of dark chocolate disks — much quicker than chopping up those 10-pound bars.

Tempering simply describes melting the chocolate.

“All its fats and sugar solids are distributed perfectly. It’s wonderful,” she said.

She uses a double boiler method, melting the chocolate disks in a bowl set over boiling water.

You stir, stir, stir until the glossy goodness is smooth.

Then it must sit, off the heat, for 10 minutes.

“It’s so hot and altered that we need to make it rest,” she says.

This is the hardest part, she admits, because she’s not very patient.

Next comes “seeding” — adding more chocolate disks to cool it to the “working” temperature, in this case between 89 and 91 degrees.

Once ready, she drops in a round white ball — smooth vanilla buttercream — and quickly bathes it in chocolate.

She scoops it out with a fork, then taps the bowl so the excess chocolate drips off.

She sets that one on wax paper to dry, then repeats the process with the remaining butter creams.

Every other time she checks the temperature, and reheats if needed.

If dipped at that perfect working temperature, the chocolate dries into a smooth surface — basically back to how it started.

“We totally destroyed it and put it back to its original state,” she says.

If the chocolate cools too much, the coating will reveal swirls and dimples — fine for eating, but not so pretty for the display case.

“I call those the misfits — and I get to eat them,” she says with a smile.

And tasting chocolate is vital to making chocolate. When she was developing her signature recipes, she did a lot of tasting.

It was too much of a good thing.

“I was sick for a week,” she says.

She recovered without losing her passion for chocolate-making.

She uses high-quality ingredients for her chocolates — Guittard chocolate from San Francisco, whole milk, cream, Oregon nuts and seasonal fruit.

“I use what I would use at home — natural, organic. And as local as possible,” she says.

She makes a batch every day, filling the kitchen with the heavy, sweet scent of melted chocolate.

It’s not always an easy process.

When finished with the butter creams, she checks the chocolate temperature.

Eighty-three degrees — six degrees below the working temperature.

“Oh, I have to start over,” she says.

Which means heating the chocolate to 115 degrees, letting it sit for 10 minutes, and then cooling it to 90 degrees.

Yet, she’s still smiling.

“It can be really frustrating sometimes,” she admits.

But trial and error is all part of the experience — as is tasting the rich confections.

“The best part is watching people eat it,” she says.

About the gallery

Peterson’s art gallery has been a project about eight years in the making.

“We’ve been working on it a long time,” Alyssa said.

The space was formerly occupied by The Flower Box.

To renovate the space, the Petersons put in new sheetrock, flooring and trim. All the work has been done by Dave, Davey and Shawn, who is also a graphic designer and is handling the gallery’s marketing.

The front part is dedicated to artwork, and will feature a new regional artist each month. The shows will open on First Friday, when the gallery stays open until 10 p.m.

Alyssa is an artist, and first learned the gallery business while attending Western Oregon University at Monmouth. She worked her way up to student gallery director.

“I really like working with artists,” she said. “That’s my passion. And designing shows.”

The rear of the gallery features a retail space of smaller works, mostly by local artists. This is also where tables, chocolate and coffee invite visitors to stay for a while.

“We wanted people to feel comfortable in the gallery,” Davey said.