It is important to harvest the pods when they are fully ripe because if the pod is unripe, the beans will have a low cocoa butter content, or there will be insufficient sugars in the white pulp for fermentation, resulting in a weak flavor. After fermentation, the beans must be quickly dried to prevent mold growth. Climate and weather permitting, this is done by spreading the beans out in the sun from five to seven days.[54]
The dried beans are then transported to a chocolate manufacturing facility. The beans are cleaned (removing twigs, stones, and other debris), roasted, and graded. Next, the shell of each bean is removed to extract the nib. Finally, the nibs are ground and liquefied, resulting in pure chocolate in fluid form: chocolate liquor.[55] The liquor can be further processed into two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter.[56]
Usually, an emulsifying agent, such as soy lecithin, is added, though a few manufacturers prefer to exclude this ingredient for purity reasons and to remain GMO-free, sometimes at the cost of a perfectly smooth texture. Some manufacturers are now using PGPR, an artificial emulsifier derived from castor oil that allows them to reduce the amount of cocoa butter while maintaining the same mouthfeel.
Refining is the final grinding of all particles in the liquid chocolate together to produce an even extremely smooth texture. If the cocoa liquor has been properly ground, the purpose of refining is to reduce the size of added sugar crystals and, in the case of milk chocolate, the particles of milk powder. During the refining process, cocoa liquor, crystalline sugar and milk components with part of the cocoa butter usually go through a prerefiner(two roll or three roll mill)first and then a five roll refiner can be used as finer after 2 roll refiner. The advantage of roller mills is that it is possible to achieve a more consistent particle size in the ground chocolate. [57]
The texture is also heavily influenced by processing, specifically conching (see below). The more expensive chocolate tends to be processed longer and thus have a smoother texture and mouthfeel, regardless of whether emulsifying agents are added.
Different manufacturers develop their own "signature" blends based on the above formulas, but varying proportions of the different constituents are used. The finest, plain dark chocolate couvertures contain at least 70% cocoa (both solids and butter), whereas milk chocolate usually contains up to 50%. High-quality white chocolate couvertures contain only about 35% cocoa.
Producers of high quality, small batch chocolate argue that mass production produces bad quality chocolate.[49] Some mass-produced chocolate contains much less cocoa (as low as 7% in many cases), and fats other than cocoa butter. Vegetable oils and artificial vanilla flavor are often used in cheaper chocolate to mask poorly fermented and/or roasted beans.[49]
In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in the United States, whose members include Hershey, Nestl, and Archer Daniels Midland, lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter, in addition to using artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes.[58] Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.[59][60]
The text was was derived from the Chocolate page on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It is for educational use in COSC 101, Intro to Computing I, at Colgate University.