Last week I went to the chocolate shop Xocolatl (Blummengasse 3) in Basel and I tried a small bar of a kind of chocolate that was "unconchiert". I found it very tasty and aromatic and I googled the word "conching". I found out that this is one of the last steps in the production process and it's done to give chocolate an homogeneous texture. I'm surprised that being a chocolate lover I never came across this word before. High quality chocolate is conched for 72 hours (that means that what I bought was low quality one )
Some days later I went to the same shop and I wanted to buy a big bar of this kind but they told me that the manufacturer is just making a trial with this sort and that it only exist as a small tablet.
Here is a photo of this chocolate if you want to try it. If you have tried this (or another) unconched type before I would like to hear your comments !
After visiting the Nestlé/Cailler chocolate factory more times than I can count, I was about to say that conched chocolate was a Nestlé invention, but this article on the history of chocolate says that Lindt invented the conching machine. The conching machines used to be a part of the tour at the Cailler factory, but I'm not sure if they still are because they completely changed the tour and only reopened this month.
1879
Rodolphe Lindt of Berne, Switzerland, produced a more smooth and creamy chocolate that melted on the tongue. He invented the "conching" machine. To conch meant to heat and roll chocolate in order to refine it. After chocolate had been conched for seventy-two hours and had more cocoa butter added to it, it was possible to create chocolate "fondant" and other creamy forms of chocolate.
hmmm... I thought all commercially chocolate was conched (i know a couple of chocolatiers who makes it "un-conched" but is usually very high-end boutique stuff...), does anyone knows if this is available anywhere is Zurich too?
I don't know if it's un-conched, but Felchlin has really good chocolate. It's definitely worth a try. The only downside is that it's on the wrong side of Switzerland for me!
Good question...sorry, I really don't know. I just eat the stuff! Maybe WalterG has an answer.
Here's Wikipedia's definition of baking chocolate from Types of Chocolate :
Unsweetened chocolate is pure chocolate liquor , also known as bitter, baking chocolate or cooking chocolate, mixed with some form of fat to produce a solid substance. It is unadulterated chocolate: the pure, ground, roasted chocolate beans impart a strong, deep chocolate flavor. With the addition of sugar, however, it is used as the base for cakes , brownies , confections , and cookies
This is pretty high end stuff. You can buy blocks of pure cacao or dark eating chocolate. I've tried some and it is probably one of the best I have ever tried.
Or if you're in the UK and are in Selfridges or Waitrose you can buy it there.
(hmmm, going to London in June. Office is just near Selfridges...yumm!)
Don't quote me on this as I'm working from memory (sweet ones...) but cooking chocolate (the one you melt to make a chocolate mousse, for example) is probably refined ("conched") because un-conched chocolate just goes soft but doesn't become gooey and all liquid, mainly due to the sugar crystal and the "knobs" of cocoa that are dissolved by the subsequent "conching".
it's difficult to explain if you haven't tried it... un-conched chocolate has an almost gritty texture as there are plenty of crystals still in it, compared to the smooth finished of a normal (conched) chocolate bar.