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Post by sugaralchemy on Feb 25, 2006 21:20:30 GMT -5
I'll agree with you that hygroscopicity can become an issue in certain situations, but the conditions you talk about are a bit on the fringes of how chocolate will be normally handled. However, I'm coming from a baking standpoint, and I would never think it reasonable to consider a product would be left out in the open air by the consumer for weeks at a time and expect anywhere near normal properties.
Most of the discussion has been about the hygroscopicity of the product in terms of before production. I think that silica with the sugar... that is probably overkill. That's really what I was thinking about when I wrote about hygroscopicity not being very important.
While I haven't yet obtained a wet grinder for running chocolate batches, I have found that a hot refining process is rather effective at driving off moisture from adding somewhat hydrated hygroscopic sugar-like compounds. You can actually see the steam rising in some cases.
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