3. On the Golden Road to Chocolate Plain chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate Cocoa paste, cocoa butter, sugar and milk are the four basic ingredients for making chocolate. By blending them in accordance with specific recipes the three types of chocolate are obtained which form the basis of every product assortment, namely Plain chocolate: cocoa paste + cocoa butter + sugar Milk chocolate: cocoa paste + cocoa butter + sugar + milk White chocolate: cocoa butter + sugar + milk Swiss foodstuffs regulations specify the limits within which the blending ratios are allowed to vary; the latitude is sufficiently wide, however, to enable the recipes of the various manufacturers to have their own character.
Kneading In the case of milk chocolate for example, the cocoa paste, cocoa butter, powdered or condensed milk, sugar and flavouring - maybe vanilla - go into the mixer, where they are pulverised and kneaded. The result is a homogeneous, paste-like mixture, which is already pleasant to the taste: chocolate at last! It is still gritty to the palate, however, and does not yet possess the final flavour which makes it so popular. It bas to be further refined.
Rolling Depending on the design of the rolling mils, three or five vertically mounted steel rollers rotate in opposite directions. Under heavy pressure they pulverise the tiny particles of cocoa and sugar down to a size of approx. 30 microns. (One micron is a thousandth part of a millimetre!) The cloying paste is first forced between the two lowest rollers. Since the roller above is rotating at a faster speed it picks up the paste and feeds it upwards on to the next roller, until, with the pressure increasing all the time and the clearance between the rollers getting less and less, a very fine, flaky powder can be scraped off the top roller by a fixed blade.
Conching But still the chocolate paste is not smooth enough to satisfy our palates. The separate flavours of the individual ingredients have not yet combined; the pure, rounded aroma is still missing. But within two or three days ail that will have been put right. For during this period the chocolate paste will be refined to such an extent in the conches that it will flatter even the most discriminating palate. Conches (from the Spanish word “concha”, meaning a shell) is the name given to the troughs in which 100 to 1000 kilograms of chocolate paste at a time can be heated up to 80 C and, while being constantly stirred, is given a velvet smoothness by the addition of certain amounts of cocoa butter and of the very valuable lecithin. In the horizontal troughs or conches, for example, a roller travels constantly from one end of the container to the other. In the circular conches, which are in more general use today as a result of their increased efficiency — their capacity can be as great as 9 tons — a similar effect is achieved by means of rotary movement. A kind of aeration of the liquid chocolate paste then takes place in the conches: its bitter taste gradually disappears and the flavour is fully developed. At the same time, the ultimate homogeneity of the chocolate is produced and a soft film of cocoa butter begins to form around each of the extremely small particles. The chocolate no longer seems sandy, but dissolves meltingly on the tongue. It has attained the outstanding purity which gives it its reputation. Further methods of refining have been developed as part of rationalisation of the production process. The elimination of the bitter taste and homogenisation no longer take place simultaneously in the conches, but in separate manufacturing operations. These processes ensure a uniform high quality of the chocolate and permit substantial economies in space, time and energy.
Temporary Storage On the hand, the conches are always filled with the largest amounts possible in the interests of efficient production. On the other hand, the moulding machines can only accept small amounts of chocolate paste at one time, in order to shape it into bars, chocolates and other products. Temporary storage is therefore necessary. For shorter periods in store, the chocolate is retained in its liquid state, but for longer storage it is solidified, usually in the form of hundredweight blocks. These blocks must be reheated before further processing so that they liquefy again.
Tempering Before the forming process, the chocolate paste must be heated to 50 C and then cooled to a specific temperature a little over 30 C depending on the product. This thickens the chocolate and imparts the right flow properties for filling the moulds. This complex operation is performed in the tempering plant and is necessary to give the final chocolate product a delicate composition, a uniform structure and a well-rounded flavour. The storage life is also increased in this way.
Source : Chocologie published by Chocosuisse CH-3000 Bern