How chocolate is made. Museum of concern "Babaevsky"

Some time ago, the Eliseevsky Confectionery House lifted the veil of the secrets of the production of chocolate products, sweets and other sweets. The production turned out to be small, but interesting and smelling delicious. Let's see how chocolate is made.

Probably, the dream of many is to get to the chocolate factory. It is easy to implement, judging by the fact that Eliseevsky conducts several excursions a day.

In the middle of the 16th century, the scientist-monk Benzoni presented a report to the King of Spain on the beneficial properties of liquid chocolate. The report was immediately classified, and chocolate was declared a state secret. Dozens of people were executed for its violation. For a long time, chocolate was only available to the very rich: production was difficult and the ingredients very expensive. And only at the end of the 19th century, confectioners were able to achieve the production of almost modern chocolate. And the sharp reduction in the price of cocoa and sugar that happened at the very beginning of the 20th century made chocolate accessible to everyone. Advertised as "the food of kings", he began his triumphal procession.

The following healing properties were attributed to chocolate: treatment of depression, improvement of well-being, rapid healing of wounds. In some countries, chocolate was considered an aphrodisiac.

Main raw material for the production of chocolate and cocoa powder are cocoa beans - the seeds of a cocoa tree that grows in tropical regions of the globe.

In the process of technological processing, the main semi-finished products are obtained from cocoa beans: cocoa mass, cocoa butter and cocoa cake. Cocoa mass and cocoa butter with powdered sugar are used to make chocolate; cocoa powder is obtained from cocoa cake.

The technology for making chocolate is kept secret, because. every chocolate factory has its own recipe.

Depending on the composition, chocolate is divided into classic, bitter, milk and white. Ordinary or classic chocolate is chocolate with a content of cocoa products from 35 to 55-60%. But in bitter chocolate, the content of cocoa products exceeds 55%. Bitter chocolate is considered the most useful, since it contains the maximum cocoa products.

As for white chocolate, it is a full-fledged representative of the chocolate empire, and it is white only because it does not contain cocoa powder and / or cocoa mass, and there is no less cocoa butter in it than in ordinary dark chocolate.

There are also diabetic options. Also, chocolate products can have aromatic additives: (coffee, alcohol, cognac, vanillin, pepper); food additives: (raisins, nuts, waffles, candied fruit) or stuffing.

Workshop for the production of handmade sweets:

Interesting facts about chocolate:

• On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, the Armenian confectionery factory Grand Candy set a world record by producing the largest chocolate bar weighing 4.41 tons, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. A bar of record chocolate was made within 4 days, its length is 5.6 m, width - 2.75 m, and height 25 cm. The previous similar record belonged to Italian confectioners, who made a bar weighing 3.58 tons.
• In 1200-1000 BC, the people of Central America drank "chocolate beer", which was made from fermented cocoa fruits.
• You can't buy a chocolate egg in the US. There is a law that prohibits putting inedible items in food.
• Marco Fanti (Italy) and his team folded a 3-ton chocolate needle out of 330 chocolate bricks in 23 hours in Perugia (Italy) on October 17, 2006.
• In the city of Pokrov, Vladimir region, there is the world's only monument to chocolate. The monument is as if created from a bar of chocolate and represents the image of a fabulous Fairy with a chocolate bar in her hand. The monument was opened on July 1, 2009 and is located a few steps from the Pokrovsky Chocolate Museum. The opening of the monument took place as part of the 15th anniversary of Kraft Foods in Russia, which initiated the creation of this monument.

They call them hand-made sweets, because on the forms for sweets a pattern of white chocolate is applied by hand:

Then the molds are filled with classic chocolate:

Get figurines:

Santa Claus:

Then they are packaged:

These sweets are also made by hand:

And this is how branded "mushrooms" are made. First, fill the mold with chocolate:

And those mushrooms! They are very tasty. An entire floor has been allocated for the production of such mushrooms, and everything is already automated there:

Dark chocolate vat:

And here is the white chocolate:

We were given the opportunity to decorate the chocolate figurines ourselves:

We go to other shops. Chocolate caviar:

Dragees are made in these round copper vats:

The chan is spinning, chocolate is added to the dragee:

Sweets with nuts, prunes and dried apricots, which will be covered with chocolate a little later:

Now they are covered with chocolate, turning into sweets:

End result to be packed:

"Local Raffaello". These candies differ from the real Raffaello in shape and name:

Chocolate is also made to order. These are candies in the form of a drop of oil for an oil company:

Chocolate iPad:

Would you like to work there?

The Pobeda confectionery factory in Russia has two production facilities, and both of them are located in the Moscow region, in the Yegoryevsky district. Various confectionery products are made here, from chocolate bars and sweets to marmalade. All factories are full-cycle production. That is, chocolate for the manufacture of chocolate bars and sweets at the factory is made independently and according to their own recipes. This year, the company opened a branch in Latvia - this is how it plans to arrange supplies to the European market. The Village went to Yegorievsk to see what and how sweets are made of.

Raw material preparation

From the outside, the building does not hint at the fact that chocolate rivers flow through the pipes, and mountains of sweets and marmalade ride along the conveyors. Factory as a factory. But as soon as we went inside, we immediately felt the smell of chocolate. It became clear - we are exactly on the spot. As usual, we put on disposable gowns, slippers, shoe covers and washed our hands and went to production.

Everything starts with a warehouse and ends with it - raw materials are stored separately, there is a room for finished products. The raw materials are packed in boxes and large bags, on some we see the inscriptions "Made in Ivory Coast", "Made in Malaysia" or "Made in the Netherlands". To make chocolate, among other things, you need cocoa butter and cocoa liquor, and for candy fillings - vegetable fat (it uses a fraction of palm oil).The equivalent of cocoa butter is sometimes added to the fillings - this is a mixture of palm oil with other exotic oils.

The first step in preparing the components is melting, as they are all solid. All this happens in ovens: an employee unpacks a cardboard box containing a large rectangular briquette of beige grated cocoa, vegetable fat or cocoa butter (ovens for the last two components are called “fat melters”), and throws it into the oven. The temperature there is about 85 degrees for grated cocoa and 65-70 degrees for cocoa butter and vegetable fats (the temperature is not universal, everything is individual for different equipment and raw materials). It is important that there are three separate fire chambers: for confectionery fat, for grated cocoa and for cocoa butter. Their streams do not mix unless it is necessary for the recipe. Then the components, which are already in a liquid state, enter the tank through the pipes, where they are weighed. Dry ingredients such as cocoa powder, sugar and its various substitutes (stevia, fructose, lactose), milk powder (whole, skimmed), cream powder or whey are poured into metal tanks, then they are automatically dosed using vacuum.

Preparation of chocolate mass

After the components are prepared, they all enter the recipe station through pipes. Here they are weighed again and, according to the recipe, they go to the chocolate mass preparation shop. Here, in a container with a capacity of one and a half tons, all the ingredients are found and mixed with cocoa butter and sugar. But the mass is not yet ready: it is tough, and the sugar crunches in it. It is necessary to grind sugar crystals into powder. This happens in a special container, where there is a pair of metal shafts that grind the mass to 90 microns. Then it is passed through five-roll mills, which look like huge rotating rolling pins, directed vertically. The mass is passed between the shafts and gradually reaches the last one, from which it is removed with a metal knife.

In the form of shavings, it enters the conche machine, where it is kneaded for 10–12 hours. The conching process is responsible for the formation of flavor in the chocolate mass. By kneading, heating, opening or closing metal shutters, you can change the taste. For example, if it is milk chocolate, then when it is heated to 80 degrees and the metal shutters are closed, all the cocoa flavor remains inside, and the sugar caramelizes, so you can get a caramel-flavored mass at the exit. If the factory wants to soften the taste of bitter chocolate, then metal shutters are opened on the conche machine to release the acids from the grated cocoa.

The filling for chocolates is prepared in a similar way - all the ingredients are ground in five-roll mills and kneaded in conche machines. Only cocoa butter with soft vegetable fat is taken as the basis. In wafer sweets, the filling differs from chocolate candies in texture, components and manufacturing principles. It is prepared in a ball mill - a container in which metal balls not only grind the ingredients, but also beat them a little.

Production of chocolates and chocolate

Chocolate mass with a temperature of 28 to 31 degrees is fed to an automatic installation, through which it goes to molds for chocolate bars. The molds are preheated so that the chocolate does not freeze immediately when it hits them. After the form is filled, it first passes through the vibration zone: the conveyor shakes it so that, firstly, excess air bubbles come out of the chocolate, and secondly, the chocolate is distributed evenly along the given edge.

Further, the molds go to the refrigeration tunnel, where the chocolate spends from 20 to 40 minutes at a temperature of 10–15 degrees. After the cooled forms are automatically turned over using a special drum, and the tiles can be easily removed from them. This happens because chocolate at low temperatures shrinks by a millimeter and becomes smaller than the shape. People on this line are kept to a minimum: one employee monitors the flow of mass to the plant, the other monitors the weight of the product. Metal detectors are installed everywhere: chocolate must be safe, without foreign inclusions.

The tiles go to the packaging machine: here everything happens automatically. Then the product is manually packed into boxes, workers check the dates, the integrity and correctness of the packaging. Those products that do not fit the test fly into the container with a marriage. True, such a marriage is not thrown away, but processed and put back into production. Chocolate with additives like nuts and raisins is not made here, all this is made at the site in Klemenovo.

The candy mass is also first heated. Both the chocolate mass and the filling mass are fed to the installation at the same time. In order not to mix them, the masses are diluted through their channels, which go to the nozzles - holes. Inside such a nozzle there is another one: the filling is fed through the inner hole, and the chocolate mass is fed through the outer hole, with a slight delay. Then the sweets also pass through the vibration zone and enter the refrigeration tunnel. If there should be a nut in the candy, then a special nut spreader adds it: needle fingers dip the nut into the filling. Near the exit from the tunnel (at the factory it is called “candy evacuation”), a knock is periodically heard: when the molds are turned over, they are knocked on so that nothing remains inside. Then - automatic packaging and packaging: some sweets are put into bags, others - into boxes.

How wafers are made

The production of wafer sweets begins with kneading the dough for the wafer sheet. In the composition - water, flour, chicory and malt in the form of a concentrate. The factory decided to remove the egg yolk from the recipe: according to Pobeda experts, firstly, it gives a not very pleasant smell to the waffle, and secondly, it makes it not crispy, but soft. The dough is prepared in a small volume - only 20 liters per batch. It is mixed in a special centrifuge.

The finished dough is fed through the distribution pipe into the storage tank, to which a comb is connected, distributing the dough over the plate. The volume of one serving of dough is calculated so that when closing this frying pan with flaps in a small cell, the dough is distributed over the entire surface. The closed pan enters the oven, and the sheet is baked for three minutes. After all the sheets fall into a special chamber: the oven can bake waffles unevenly, and in this cabinet the moisture content of all sheets is balanced.

Next, the filling is spread on the waffles. It is pre-whipped in a mixer to a certain density, cooled and fed under pressure to the rollers. Their principle of operation is the same as that of a roll-on deodorant: as soon as a sheet approaches, the roller passes over it, transferring the filling to the wafer. Then another wafer sheet is placed on top, automatically pressed, and then the workpiece enters the cooling cabinet. After the product, which looks like a cake, is served for slicing: knives first cut it in length, and then in width. Special rollers and guides separate the sweets from each other. Then all the wafers are poured with chocolate, pass through the vibration zone and are again sent to the refrigeration tunnel, from where they go directly to the packaging and packaging shop.

By the way, factory employees can try everything that is produced here. True, not in the workshop, but they can take a handful of sweets and chocolates with them for lunch. All finished products are sent to the warehouse, and from there to stores in Russia, the CIS countries, Germany and even the USA.

Somehow, little daughters heard on the radio that chocolate trees grow in hot tropical countries. Blimey! They drew a funny picture: a huge garden with sprawling trees - ripe chocolate hares hang on one, large heavy bars of bitter chocolate hang from the other, chocolate with nuts ripens on the third ...

Now the daughters have grown up and know that all these goodies are made in confectionery factories, and not chocolates grow on chocolate trees, but cocoa beans - vegetable raw materials, from which they then get a delicious treat loved by adults and children all over the planet. Beans are harvested and sold to all countries of the world where it is impossible to grow them. Including, of course, Russia.

And for the answer, how cocoa beans turn into real chocolate, we decided to go to one of the oldest Russian "sweet" enterprises, which is now called OJSC "Babaevskoye". Margarita Mikhailovna Kostyuk, a technologist at a confectionery factory, told us about this. And not only told, but also showed.

First, we went up to the workshop, where cocoa beans are sorted on special equipment, sent to the roasting department by a conveyor, then roasted and cooled. I tried "on the tooth" one such fried "nut". Terribly tasteless and bitter. Until you get the taste of your favorite chocolate!

Cocoa nibs - dry and fragrant - move to the next installation: two massive disks with protruding "fingers" rotate at great speed in different directions, spinning bean grains in their frantic dance. And - a miracle! - at the exit from the installation, cocoa no longer pours, but ... flows. Krupka turned into a mushy flowing mass! It turns out that each bean contains more than half of the cocoa butter. Rubbing dry grains between the rotating fingers of the disks, the installation releases oil, which changes the consistency of the supplied mass. After all, liquid cocoa mass, as it is now called, is more convenient for pumping to the next workshop, where chocolate masses are prepared.

The recipe of all chocolates without exception includes cocoa mass, cocoa butter and powdered sugar. The main thing is to mix them together in certain proportions.

This is where the computer comes to the rescue. The weight of each of the components is entered into it, and the computer begins to lead: serve cocoa mass! And now - oil! Powder! And the required component is supplied to the scales from the required capacity in the required amount.
- I personally especially love our branded "Babaevsky" chocolate, - says Margarita Mikhailovna. - Cognac and tea extract are also added to it, which gives a special touch to the taste. But in the "Children's" no additional components are placed.

After the required weight of all ingredients is measured, the sluice valves are closed, and the mass is sent first to the mixer, and then to the conche machine for thorough mixing.
The mixed mass - it's already almost chocolate, only liquid and hot - is pumped to the next workshop for casting, where large and small, with and without filling, bitter and sweet, figured and flat chocolates are obtained on a tile machine. Here, it turns out, what a long way cocoa beans go before they fall from the chocolate tree into our hands and melt in our mouths. But how beautiful it is! And delicious!
Before entering the factory, inhaling the bitter aroma and swallowing my saliva, I dreamed about how I would try all the varieties, evaluate the taste at each stage of preparation. But, as you now understand, in the process of work it is not very possible to taste: around the machines, cars, everything is spinning and spinning. And as the pleasure was delayed, the appetite grew more and more. But when the long-awaited moment of sampling finally arrived, it turned out that chocolate is not food after all. Each variety is a unique, often gourmet delicacy that is not eaten - that is enjoyed.

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