Hardness, gloss and microstructure: high-quality bars easier to prepare. Molecule that revolutionizes chocolate production discovered.
Chocolate is a passion for everyone, but when we talk about "passion" we essentially stop at the fact that everyone likes to eat it: approaching the precious brown bars with a "scientific" approach, in other words with that curiosity that from the pure tasting pleasure - absolutely not to be underestimated - shifts the focus to the production process, if you do this, in short, it happens to lift the curtain on another world: that of "behind the scenes" of one of the pleasures par excellence dedicated to our palate.
How to make high quality chocolate
So, about "how to make it": to produce quality chocolate it is necessary to use complex procedures of heating and cooling of raw materials. It is not possible to make mistakes in temperature or timing, because it does not take much and the refined cocoa product "goes crazy", with a consequent loss of consistency, fluidity or lucidity: all characteristics that must be perfectly balanced in order to make the bar considered of high quality.
A way to "read" the quality of chocolate are the so called crystals of cocoa butter, which can take different shapes: among all, the "V" shape is the most wanted one, in fact it is commonly associated to the high quality of the product. To obtain it is very difficult, but a discovery could change things: to put it in other words, great chocolate at a great price, what could be better?
What changes with the discovery of a new molecule
The molecule that simplifies the life of chocolatiers and - presumably - saves consumers' pockets, is the result of a research conducted by the Canadian University of Guelph and coordinated by Alejandro Marangoni, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Researchers managed to obtain the sought-after V-shaped crystals by adding a particular molecule, made of glycerol, combined fatty acids and phosphoric acid, to cocoa butter, without going through the tempering phase, which is the most delicate one. The result, however, was equally satisfactory: hardness, gloss and microstructure are within the parameters of the best chocolate.
Chocolate naturally belongs to a huge slice of our collective imagination: not everyone knows that the first photo taken with an iPhone portrayed a chocolate cookie. The delicious dessert was also chosen by NASA as a gift for an unusual space birthday.
Giuseppe Giordano