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Post by ripvanwinkle on Jan 19, 2008 11:23:56 GMT -5
I am working at making milk chocolate that is not bad for teeth. For that I have to get rid of the lactose or other sugars that would be bad for teeth.
I find that the soy and rice milks seem to have sugars in them. Maybe not lactose or sucrose or the breakdown products fructose and glucose, but sugars nonetheless. I want to use xylitol which is well documented not to support tooth decay.
My secondary concern is taste. The milk chocolate must taste good - preferably like the products that the better home and professionals make. I like the white chocolate that Hebert's makes, especially the white. (http://www.hebertcandies.com/) Their white tastes to me like it contains a touch of sweetened condensed milk - I wonder if anyone else is familiar with it and tastes something like that. (?)
So - does anyone know of a powdered product that can be used to make "milk" chocolate that does not contain the "bad" sugars? I will appreciate any and all comments and your thoughts!
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jan 22, 2008 4:23:35 GMT -5
Before you go down the road of doing anything with sugar, establish some good control recipes. Match the flavor profile of a white chocolate may be surprisingly hard - matching the cocoa butter's odor level, the vanilla flavors, and sometimes other flavors added to comically sold products. Keep samples of these controls around before you launch into experiments. It would be best to move to working out formulas on a % basis so you can keep your head on straight when comparing and easily scale formulas.
Xylitol is probably your best bet if you want the anti-cariogenic benefits, but it has a massive cooling effect that lends a sort of minty taste. I have seen studies suggesting that even moderate amounts of lactose present in milk chocolate made with xylitol do not lower the pH of the mouth sufficiently to induce tooth decay.
Also see my comments in the "suggestions on maltitol?" thread (also in this same dietary formulations section) for some excellent proposals on how to replace sugar. Bottom line, isomalt + sucralose + ace-k will yield a dang good chocolate, and you can do it with consumer accessible products linked there. Isomalt doesn't have a noticeable cooling effect, and is non-cariogenic, but not anti-cariogenic as far as I know or any studies have suggested.
When using these sugar alternatives, don't overdose (laxative effect!), and remember, you don't really save much in the way of calories. There may also be all sorts of other challenges you find along the way, which is why these chocolates are typically left to the realm of processional formulators. There are also many other great ingredients for replacing sugar out there with big pluses versus those listed here, but they're just not consumer accessible, and/or have special issues associated with their processing.
Start by getting your sugars straight and an acceptable chocolate coming out using your preferred replacement blend. Once you do that, then work on the milk aspect. Do not try to change two variables at once if you want a quality result and sane development process.
As for the milk, non-dairy milk substitutes are all packed with tooth-decay causing sugars or starches, and frankly, taste very little like milk. Some contain various other fats, which are likely incompatible with cocoa butter and will cause issues. You need real dairy here.
You can look at dairy protein isolates, like calcium/sodium caseinate, or whey protein isolate. Caseinate isn't super tasty, but is kind of milky and tends to help keep your chocolate thin and flowable. Whey proteins can be a bit better tasting (depends greatly on the brand) but also have a distinctive taste, and tend to make chocolate thicken up. Both caseinate and whey protein can be found online with some digging, usually at nutrition sites - but make sure it's NOT flavored!!
Commercially, numerous milk protein concentrates and isolates exist. However, they aren't really available to consumers. There are also complex milk flavors and other things you can use, although not consumer accessible, and those also bump into FDA standard of identity issues... anyhow, point is, they get complicated rapidly.
Also, don't forget the milkfat! White and milk chocolate contains 5-20% of the total fat content from milk, which softens the chocolate, increases bloom resistance, and enhances creaminess. Any dairy proteins you use will contain practically zero fat (and any you read on the label is probably bound and doesn't count.)
Experimenting with a range of 7-15% of total fat is most likely to yield the textures you want. Remember, this is % of total fat, not % of total formula. Therefore, 7% of total fat in a recipe with a total fat content of 40% would be just 2.8% of total chocolate weight.
Finally, if you're really concerned about teeth, consider neutralizing a bit of acidity, particularly in milk and dark chocolates. Do this by adding a food grade alkali during refining. This is done commercially to the extreme to produce alkalized chocolate, which has a unique taste (think oreo, dove bar) and slightly more velvety texture. But even just increasing the pH moderately could be beneficial.
Baking soda is an easy option, but not terribly soluble so it might not react fully during refining, leaving an odd characteristic in the mouth. (Though slight in-mouth acidity neutralization would be good for the teeth, the eating experience would likely be poor.)
Stronger bases like sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide and potassium carbonate can be used at much lower levels and tend to react fully quite quickly - this kind of ingredient is used in commercially alkalized cocoa liquor, powder and chocolate. However, BE VERY INFORMED BEFORE USING THESE. THEY ARE VERY POTENT AND EVEN DANGEROUS IF MIS-USED AND CAN CAUSE BLINDNESS OR BURNS IF EXPOSED TO YOUR EYES OR SKIN. Despite that, they're perfectly safe to use except for their sheer concentration, assuming you obtain FCC or USP grade materials.
I hope this crash course helps you get on track... you've got some research to do!
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Post by ripvanwinkle on Jan 23, 2008 10:29:01 GMT -5
sugaralchemy, thank you very much for your thoughts! You are very informed - now I must go back and read your comments over more and digest them. pun, eehhh A thought: I have been led to believe that the xylitol provides a mixture with saliva that is not nutritious to the bacteria found in our mouths - at least the bad bacteria. It is the replacement of the sucrose, lactose and other "friendly" sugars with the non-nutritive xylitol that is beneficial. I have not read of a pH issue but an acid environment certainly is to be avoided. If I can find suitable milk flavoring chemicals I will find a source. I am not put off by sourcing - where there's a will there's a way. For now though I am shooting for an off-the-shelf milk powder that will get me going. As you have observed, that's not going to be an easy job. Have you tasted the Hebert's white chocolate? It tastes to me like sweetened condensed milk. I like the taste simply because I grew up eating it. It is not - to my taste - a milk taste as much as a condensed milk taste and that makes me think that I may be able to make a chocolate (white or milk) that veers off from the standard tastes - and get away with it. After all, the benefits will be substantial so the incentives to liking the "new" taste could be worth some effort. One other thought - xylitol has a rather hefty 40% less calories than sucrose, weight for weight, but the same sweetness. The decrease in calories may counteract the problem of early users with digesting it. I caution my friends to start slow or else! Most heed my warning and build up to normal size rations of their xylitol chocolate. Caution at first = less calories later. Almost everything has its trade offs. ----------------------- Regarding cavities and xylitol - the Japanese are very high on xylitol gum. Of course we have xylitol gum here but not like they do. Interesting. (I buy 300 piece containers of Spry gum to get the price down.) I had a tooth that my dentist put on a "watch" because it was a bit tender. I started chewing the Spry gum two months ago. It may be that the calcium coating on the tooth is healing itself - the tooth is lots less tender now. I doubted that healing would happen when I read the test results but maybe it is happening to me. Children benefit with fewer cavities, if we are to believe tests.
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jan 23, 2008 21:03:18 GMT -5
You need to understand tooth decay - it is caused by a low pH in the mouth. Basically, bacteria consume sugar and starch, multiply and produce lactic acid as a byproduct. This drops the pH on the teeth, because the bacteria are growing as a plaque on the teeth.
The result of a low pH in the mouth is tooth decay, as teeth are made of calcium compounds that dissolve in strong acids.
The cariogenicity of a food is measured by the effect on pH. Xylitol goes beyond not just feeding the bacteria, but actively interferes with their metabolism, reducing the ability to lower pH. So, for example, 5% sugar in a foodstuff might lower the pH on the teeth enough to cause tooth decay, but adding 10% xylitol + 5% sugar in the foodstuff might stop it. Of course, these numbers are entirely made up, but might not be too far from reality.
As for the condensed milk flavor in some chocolate, that's from maillard reactions, likely milk crumb being used, which is quite problematic to do without sugar. In fact, it's almost impossible for the average person to obtain in regular form!
As for calories, while yes, xylitol has 40% fewer calories, when you consider the calories in cocoa butter, milkfat, etc. the number ends up being more like a 10-15% caloric reduction in the finished chocolate, which borders on trivial.
Your best bet is to develop standard formulations that achieve the taste you want, replace the sugar and adjust them back to your liking, then replace the milk. This is going to require dozens of batches on your part, if not more.
Of course, you may be able to get away with leaving the milk intact, given xylitol's anti-cariogenic properties, but then you end up with a distinctive cooling effect in your chocolate, and without lab tests, it will be impossible to know.
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Post by mistacandy on Apr 7, 2008 15:36:57 GMT -5
Try powdered goats milk. John Nanci said he might put some on his store soon. I heard it doesn't taste different than regular milk, and it is alot easier to find.
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Post by ripvanwinkle on Apr 7, 2008 16:58:19 GMT -5
sugaralchemy, good point about acidity. I have read that another factor is that the bugs dont like xylitol any more than my dog does. (Xylitol is a great nose spray too I find. Kills germs in the nasal passages.) So the bugs are not going to get any nutrition from the xylitol sugar and tartar buildup will be less. There appears to be a lot of work done with kids chewing gum laced with xylitol after school lunches I believe - results have been promising there too. Lower acidity and reduces bacteria growth: cant be all bad.
Now to find a sugarless milk...
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Post by ripvanwinkle on Apr 7, 2008 17:07:40 GMT -5
mistacandy, after looking a while I found a nutrition table for goats' milk and see that the sugar level is a shade under 7% of the powder weight. Close to cow's milk. I gotta get way below that I think.
I dont know what posessed Danisco to stop making it's sugarless milk powder. That would have been perfect.
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Post by sugaralchemy on Apr 7, 2008 18:01:57 GMT -5
There are plenty of other options in terms of milk protein concentrates, milk protein isolates, and caseinates. Most truly sugar-free milk chocolate is made using sodium caseinate or calcium caseinate. Whey protein concentrate or isolate is another option, but it tends to drive the viscosity up quite a bit as compared to sodium caseinate.
The abundance of alternatives is probably why Danisco isn't making the product any longer. Their product may just not have been that distinctive in a market with so many other options.
What you said about xylitol actively combating bacteria - that is what I meant when I said that it caused the mouth pH not to drop as much, even when sugar is present. Many formulations have been tested made with regular milk powder and xylitol and found to be tooth friendly, due to the unique action of xylitol.
Also, FYI, goat milk is no better than cow's milk in terms of sugar content.
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