Dark chocolate requires only cocoa mass, cocoa butter, and sugar. Adding milk powder makes milk chocolate. Because it contains no cocoa mass, some do not consider it a true chocolate. A conche is a large agitator that stirs and smooths the mixture under heat. This is an important step in the process of producing consistent, pure, and delicious gourmet chocolate — and it is here that the final aroma and flavor are defined.
At this point, soy lecithin and cocoa butter may be added for required fluidity. Chocolate is then refined until smooth and the longer a chocolate is conched, the smoother it will be. The chocolate is now finished and ready for final processing. Tempering chocolate is something any aspiring baker or chocolate maker can try at home.
Around the world, chocolatiers, bakers, chefs, and pastry experts use this highly versatile, delicious food in countless applications and preparations, from simple to elaborate. The Spanish kept chocolate quiet for a very long time.
It was nearly a century before the treat reached neighboring France, and then the rest of Europe. To celebrate the union, she brought samples of chocolate to the royal courts of France. As the trend spread through Europe, many nations set up their own cacao plantations in countries along the equator.
Chocolate remained immensely popular among European aristocracy. Royals and the upper classes consumed chocolate for its health benefits as well as its decadence. Chocolate was still being produced by hand, which was a slow and laborious process.
But with the Industrial Revolution around the corner, things were about to change. In , the invention of the chocolate press revolutionized chocolate making. This innovative device could squeeze cocoa butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving a fine cocoa powder behind. The powder was then mixed with liquids and poured into a mold, where it solidified into an edible bar of chocolate.
And just like that, the modern era of chocolate was born. Different forms and flavours of chocolate are produced by varying the quantities of the different ingredients.
Other flavours can be obtained by varying the time and temperature when roasting the beans. Milk chocolate is solid chocolate made with milk added in the form of powdered milk, liquid milk, or condensed milk.
Such chocolate is labelled as "family milk chocolate" elsewhere in the European Union. The Hershey Company is the largest producer in the US. The actual Hershey process is a trade secret, but experts speculate that the milk is partially lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, and then the milk is pasteurized, stabilizing it for use. The sugars and fats that are added to chocolate make it high in calories, which may lead to weight gain.
Furthermore, many of the protective effects that chocolate may offer might be mitigated by overconsumption. Scientists debate how long humans have been using and consuming cacao beans. Chocolate's history goes back at least 2, years , while historians Sophie and Michael Coe, authors of " The True History of Chocolate " Thames and Hudson, , suggest that it might go back four millennia.
The word chocolate can be traced back to the Aztec word "xocoatl," the name for a bitter drink made from cacao beans. This was the way chocolate was consumed until the Spanish conquistadors came to Central America. In several pre-Columbian Latin American societies, cacao beans were used as currency, according to Smithsonian magazine.
Mayans and Aztecs believed the beans had mystical properties and used them during important rituals. When the Spanish arrived, sweetened chocolate came into existence. Chocolate was a fashionable drink for rich Europeans throughout the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution allowed chocolate to be mass-produced and brought the treat to the masses. The popularity led to the development of cacao tree plantations. Enslaved people farmed most of the plantations.
When the indigenous peoples began to die in large numbers from diseases brought by Europeans, enslaved Africans were brought over to make up the labor shortage. In addition to sugarcane, indigo and other crops, enslaved Africans planted, maintained and harvested cacao trees throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America to feed the new European taste for chocolate.
In , Dutch physicist Coenraad Van Houten experimented with removing varied amounts of the cocoa butter from chocolate liquor, according to Cornell University. This led to the creation of cocoa powder and soon solid chocolate. In , a Bristol, England, chocolate company, Fry's, created the first mass-produced chocolate bar when Joseph Fry added additional cocoa butter to Van Houten's chocolate, which turned it into a moldable paste, according to Bristol Museums.
Major European chocolate brands Lindt and Cadbury also got their start in the s; Rodolphe Lindt invented the conching machine, which gives chocolate a velvety texture. Mass chocolate consumption hit the United States in the late s when Milton S. Hershey began selling chocolate-coated caramels. He then developed his own formula for milk chocolate, purchased chocolate factory equipment and introduced mass-produced chocolate bars and other shapes, like Hershey's Kisses, in In , the Mars Co.
That same year, former Hershey employee H. As the years progressed, chocolate concoctions from both small and large producers became increasingly innovative. In September , Swiss chocolate company Barry Callebaut introduced ruby chocolate. Ruby chocolate comes from isolating specific compounds in cocoa beans, according to Confectionary News.
That, along with a modified processing technique, results in a rosy pink chocolate that has a sweet but sour berry taste and no traditional chocolate flavor, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The process involves harvesting coca, refining coca to cocoa beans, and shipping the cocoa beans to the manufacturing factory for cleaning, coaching and grinding.
These cocoa beans will then be imported or exported to other countries and be transformed into different type of chocolate products Allen, Chocolate production starts with harvesting coca in a forest.
Cocoa needs to be harvested manually in the forest. The seed pods of coca will first be collected; the beans will be selected and placed in piles.
These cocoa beans will then be ready to be shipped to the manufacturer for mass production. Cocoa beans grow in pods that sprout off of the trunk and branches of cocoa trees. The pods are about the size of a football. The pods start out green and turn orange when they're ripe. When the pods are ripe, harvesters travel through the cocoa orchards with machetes and hack the pods gently off of the trees.
Click here for a video clip of Cocoa processing " minutes" Requires RealPlayer. Machines could damage the tree or the clusters of flowers and pods that grow from the trunk, so workers must be harvest the pods by hand, using short, hooked blades mounted on long poles to reach the highest fruit.
After the cocoa pods are collected into baskets ,the pods are taken to a processing house. Here they are split open and the cocoa beans are removed.
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