Posted by Gerard on July 21, 1998 at 17:39:29:
In Reply to: Chocolate for moulds posted by Sylvie on July 21, 1998 at 15:47:19:
Sylvie,
whatcha mean choclate from scratch??
You cannot make choc without the mills/conches needed to process it all.
Look at the formulation of choc, its fairly simple. Cocoa liquer, sugar, coca butter. For milk choc add milk powder.
The big problem is getting the sugar into it, you can buy coca liquer and butter and melt them together no problemo.
How do you intend to get the sugar in without crystals grinding between the teeth?
Fluid levels required to dissolve sugar will make chocolate seize and become crumbly, useless.
Corn syrup? moisture content is WAY too high. Glucose is same thing with lower moisture contents but still impossible to use.
Sugar is NOT dissolved in chocolate, its milled between rollers until the particle size is down in the micron range, the human palate can detect somewhere down around 40 microns (I don't recall the exact range),
good choc is well below that. Cheaper chocs like Hershey is well above the detectable range which is why it "tastes" rough like sandpaper.
The conching process takes several days, the machinery is about the size of a bus, you can imagine the elec bill and thats another reason quality choc is so expensive, its expensive to make.!
BTW, you can actually feel the particles in hersheys, disssolve it on your tangue, just as it dissapears on the palate you'll distinctly 'feel' particles.
What sort of wafers are you using, is it a non tempering compound coating?
Good , high quality euro couverture isn't really expensive, some are quite reasonable , I use cocoBarry from France.
You might want to try your hand at tempering real good chocolate if you haven't yet.
One thing you CAN play with is adding chocolate liquer to a base of whatever you're already using, it will strengthen the flavor.
Hope this helps.
Cheers, Gerard.