I want to make plain dark chocolate at home.
The process is tricky in my experience, not simply mixing cocoa, cocoa butter, milk powder, sugar, etc.
Can you share some practical tips for doing the process and choosing the right ingredients.
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Note that recipe requests are off topic here. I therefore removed it.– Stephie ♦Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 22:01
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1Meaning make dark chocolate straight from cocoa beans? I mean... making a chocolate product like truffles is one thing but plain dark chocolate (or bitter chocolate) is usually the starting point... people don't make it themselves. You buy the percentage you want and then turn it into something else...– CatijaCommented Feb 28, 2016 at 22:04
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@rumtscho that one? cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/36645/…– Stephie ♦Commented Feb 29, 2016 at 10:57
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I´m quite certain this is a duplicate - not the one Stephie linked, but a true "how do I create real chocolate starting with cocoa powder and fat" thing. Couldn´t find an older question though, maybe somebody will remember it.– rumtscho ♦Commented Feb 29, 2016 at 11:17
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@rumtscho, I found cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/50276/…, cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21317/…, cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21121/…, all discussing the subject, but none a real dupe, IMHO.– Stephie ♦Commented Mar 2, 2016 at 5:55
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1 Answer
Sorry to rain on your parade, but making good quality chocolate in a home kitchen without special equipment is basically impossible.
The magic tool is a conche - a machine that grinds the cocoa solids so finely, that you can't feel them with your tongue any more. We are talking about a particle size of 10-20 micrometers here. It also distributes fat and sugar in a very specific way. At the same time, temperature rises in a controlled way, altering the flavour profile of your ingredients. For very high quality results one batch took up to 90 hours. Modern technique recently brought this down to an hour or so for good results, provided the chocolate mass is pre-treated to remove unwanted aromatic compounds. Note that we are talking about an industrial scale here, small-batch conches still need 12-24 hours.
The bad news is that even if you committed yourself to manually "conch" for hours, the results would probably be not very satisfying: the precise parameters (time, temperature, humidity...) are a carefully guarded secret of each manufacturer as they significantly contribute to the specific taste and mouthfeel of the brand.