Belgian chocolate liquor processed with alkali?

[grasswire]

That's the first ingredient in a tub of dark chocolate non-pareils from Trader Joe's. What is it?

Other ingredients are sugar, soy lecithin, corn starch, carnauba wax. The front label says "77% Belgian dark chocolate."

[housewolf]

1. It's a substance that's often used to treat cocoa..

Dutch-process cocoa (or "Dutched cocoa") is slightly milder in taste, with a deeper and warmer colour than natural cocoa. It changes the cocoa from an acid to al alkali basis and makes it somewhat less bitter.

The label ""77% Belgian dark chocolate" tells you that the chocolate is composed of 77% cocoa solids and cocoa butter and the "chocolate liquor processed with alkali" tells you that those chocolate has been "Dutched". 77% is a very fine dark chocolate. Anything over 70% is considered to be dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is 50% max. Semi-sweet is anything between 50% and 70%.

The chocolate-making process roasts and grinds up the cocoa nibs, creating what they call "chocolate liqour" or sometimes "cocoa liqour". This can be separated out into 2 products - cocoa butter and cocoa powder. If the chocolate liquor is simply hardened, you have unsweetened baking chocolate. Additional ingredients are added to the chocolate liquor to make various grades of dark, semi-sweet and milk chocolate versions of baking and eating chocolate - these ingredients usually include sugar, soy lecithin and additional cocoa butter.

Examples of Dutch-processed cocoa are Van Hauten's, Droste's, and Hershey European. Examples of natural (or non-Dutched) cocoa are Hershey's and Nestle's.

As for the actual alkalis themselves that are used to treat the cocoa, generally that's some sort of alkali "salt" or chemical compound with a pH value greater than 7. From Wikipedia: "In chemistry, an alkali (from Arabic: Al-Qaly القلي, القالي ) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal element. Alkalis are best known for being bases (compounds with pH greater than 7) that dissolve in water." Food-grade Lye is an alkali agent. Here are some others:
* sodium hydroxide (often called "caustic soda")
* potassium hydroxide (commonly called "caustic potash")
* lye (generic term, for either of the previous two, or even for a mixture)
* calcium carbonate (sometimes called "free lime")
* magnesium hydroxide is an example of an atypical alkali: it is a weak base (cannot be detected by phenolphthalein) and it has low solubility in water

As with pretzles, which are treated with lye (they are dipped into a lye solution), foods treated with alkali agents are safe to eat.

This may be more than you ever wanted to know... but I hope it at least answers your question!

[grasswire]

2. veddy interesting, thanks.

I'm not afraid of lye. I use it to make homemade pretzels. What I've never figured out is how to keep those wet pretzels from sticking to the pan, though.

[housewolf]

3. Homemade Hard Pretzles - Alton Brown recommends

lining the pan with parchment and brushing it lightly with some vegetable oil... His recipe doesn't use lye, it just dips the prezels in boiling water than places on the parchment-lined pan and gives them a egg wash. But it might work for you.

You might give that a try next time.

[grasswire]

4. I'll keep that in mind

I think it must be the lye that causes the sticking. The ones I make are the big soft kind. Anyway, I've even waxed pans with parafin and they still stuck. Cornmeal, they stuck. Brown paper, they stuck.