It is regrettable that gluten is found in most Lindt products so as to guarantee the perfect and unique taste of Lindt chocolate. Only the finest grade cocoa beans, known as "Criollo" cocoa, grown in Central and South America and the Caribbean, are used. Recipes are found at Lindt.com and include mousse and crumble. Lindt has become known as one of the most innovative and creative companies making premium chocolate, with six production sites in Europe, two in the USA and distribution and sales companies on four continents. Anyone, with gluten allergies or none, can sample the story of Lindt: In 1845, Sprüngli & Son manufactured solid chocolate in their small confectionery and, since then, the company has gone through many different eras, but the entrepreneurial spirit and passion for making chocolate that drove both the Sprüngli family as well as Rodolphe Lindt, when he invented the first truly melting chocolate and later on sold his business to Sprüngli, are still alive. In 1879, Lindt purchased two fire-damaged factories near Bern and a few outdated machines. At that time, chocolate was a brittle, rough-surfaced and somewhat bitter substance, laboriously pressed into moulds by hand. Rodolphe’s brother August thought that the moisture in the chocolate paste, which crystallised with the sugar, should be extracted during processing, suggesting the addition of cocoa butter at the same time to smooth out the conventional paste’s texture. The substance that Rodolphe Lindt obtained after trying for three days and three nights of uninterrupted stirring was vastly different from conventional chocolate paste. This dark, velvety mass with a matte gleam was easy to mould, but melted effortlessly on the tongue. Lindt called it chocolat fondant, literally meaning "melting chocolate”. After carefully roasting and crushing a variety of cocoa beans, the cocoa mass is mixed together and refined stepwise on rollers to attain a mass of the highest finesse. Then in the conching process, in which the paste is churned and stirred for long hours, the flavour unfolds. Cocoa butter is added to the mixture while the paste is warmed by internal friction, and the chocolate (after it has cooled) can be packaged for distribution.
