Why does chocolate only melt smoothly in a pot inside hot water, but not in a pot that is directly heated?
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Whilst the other comments are correct, and au bain marie is indeed a very common method for melting chocolate, it is not impossible to smoothly melt chocolate directly in a pan. It helps to have a thick bottomed pan, to moderate the heating, a very low flame, even taking it off the heat briefly if it gsts too warm, and of course stiring continuously.
That all to say that there is nothing magical about a double boiler, it is all about moderating the temperature.
You can melt chocolate smoothly in a pot that is directly heated. But it’s harder because the chocolate will burn at lower temperatures than directly heated pots reach without much care.
The most common stoves use either a flame (usually fed by gas) or what’s essentially really chunky light bulbs. In theory turning them up and down again and again keeps a somewhat level temperature.
It’s much less of a hassle to use water as a buffer. As other comments stated, the water goes to 100°C at most. Any excess energy is converted into the phase transition (water -> steam) instead of more heat.
Confectioner here. Anything above 64C destroys the chocolate . Its called temping the chocolate. Its a whole science
It’s all about a SLOW distribution of heat over a WIDE surface area.
You bake a cake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, it comes out fine. Bake it at 600 degrees for 15 minutes, and it will come out burned, because all the heat is on the outside of the cake. While the inside is still soft because heat hasn’t had enough time to penetrate.
When you melt chocolate in a basic pan, the bottom chocolate will burn before it has time to pass heat upwards.
Too much heat too fast. The water mediates the speed at which the heat is transferred and prevents it from going over a temperature that will burn the chocolate.
In addition to modulating temperature to avoid burning and uneven heating, melting chocolate over hot water such as with a double boiler is how you can create tempered chocolate. Tempered chocolate has been heated gently and cooled slowly such that the fat molecules in the cocoa butter arranges itself in a crystalline structure. This is how you create that ultra smooth, snappy chocolate texture you see in fresh high-quality chocolate bars, candies, truffles, and cake decorations. Melting chocolate more aggressively will destroy the structure, creating a bendy, chewy, dull-looking thing once cooled, and must be re-tempered via seeding (adding additional tempered chocolate and trying again) or letting it cool while stirring constantly.
Gas stoves are too hot so the water acts as a regulator to avoid the chocolate burning, but you can melt it directly in electric ones
It’s difficult to directly apply enough gradual heat to chocolate to melt it before it burns. But a double boiler or steam bath. Can apply 100°c heat evenly to the chocolate melting it without it burning.
Bonus chocolate tip. If you mix a tiny bit of oil into the melted chocolate. The chocolate will look slightly glossy instead of matte.
TL;DR you can, but you’ll likely burn the chocolate, and flames don’t burn soft enough to make this easy to do.
It WILL melt smoothly in a pot that is on direct heat… the problem is that for basically every stove in the world, direct heat is too hot, and you’ll burn the chocolate instead of just melting it. chocolate is EXTREMELY easy to burn and solidify chunks of it, and one of the easier ways to work with it is to heat it slowly over a water bath, because it won’t burn at that temperature.
If you’re extremely careful and diligent, you can heat it over higher temperatures on a direct flame, but to avoid burning you have to be constantly AND QUICKLY scraping all the walls of the bowl/pot, and more than likely moving back and forth from being on the heat to off the heat. Can also melt it in a microwave if you do it at intervals of like 20-30 seconds, stir, 20-30 seconds, stir, until melted.
It’s also easier to reach temperatures for tempering chocolate properly using water bath, but that’s out of ELI5 territory.
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