fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Jun 3, 2019 14:04:30 GMT -5
First off I have to say that chocolate making is easily the best hobby ever! I tell that to anyone that will listen and share my chocolate anyone who wants to try it. I'm guessing that's why they still humor me =D
Now I'm trying to make the transition from beginners luck to intermediate technique. Overall I've had really good luck with tempering, but most of the time I make milk chocolate which I think is more forgiving. I've only made dark chocolate a few, and twice now the temper has been really bad. Here's what I did, any help debugging would be great!
After the melanger is done, I weight out 1% grated cocoa butter seed and stir the chocolate in the melanger until it reaches 95F, then I stir in the seed and stir a bit more. At 91-92F I start filling molds. Both times I used syringes. This last time I had a nice wide aperture in the syringe and the chocolate flowed easily in and out which made me very optimistic. Interestingly after the chocolate cooled there as bloom not only out the outer surface but through the structure of the chocolate.
Now, last time this happened I remeleted in a stainless bowl over a double boiler, cooled to 95F, stirred in the cocoa butter seed and cooled a bit more, filled the syringe and remolded. The result had near perfect temper!
So, any guess as to what I might be doing wrong when I tempered in the melanger?
Thanks!
-Fred
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Post by Ben on Jun 3, 2019 14:32:20 GMT -5
Hi Fred.
A few questions:
Did you test the temper before molding when you did it in the stone grinder? Was it ok?
Are you continuing to stir and monitor the temperature as you mold? I'd imagine that the grinder stones retain heat, and could easily throw your chocolate out of temper. Maybe they're creating hot spots that are causing problems.
How are you cooling the molded chocolate?
Lastly, I'd just reiterate what I said in a different thread, and what your experience with remelting and retempering the chocolate shows: doing it in a stainless bowl is easier and gives you more control.
-Ben
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fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Jun 3, 2019 17:14:19 GMT -5
Ben , Thank you for this - I did not test the temper, how do you recommend doing that? After getting the chocolate into the molds, I put them on a table near open windows. The ambient temperature was at most in the high 60's. I'm pretty sure I've cooled this way before without any issues so I would tend to rule out cooling as being the issue. I think it must have something to do with the temperature. Your hot spot theory is a good one and my milk chocolate is probably less effected by it. I will stick to stainless bowls and maybe some way of adding heat when things cool... -Fred
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Post by Ben on Jun 4, 2019 7:23:36 GMT -5
You can test temper by dipping the tip of a knife or some parchment paper and letting it set. If it sets in a reasonable time without streaks or spots, the chocolate is in temper. I would not rule out cooling as part of the problem, especially for such a thick piece of chocolate. I think the bloom shown in your photos could easily be caused by insufficient cooling. Ideally, the temp would be in the mid 50s with some airflow to help draw off heat. As chocolate crystallizes, it releases latent heat in a burst that will take your chocolate out of temper without adequate cooling. See this article, which discusses cooling (note that I've just skimmed the article, so am not sure that it's entirely applicable to this discussion): www.newfoodmagazine.com/article/2048/chocolate-cooling-and-demoulding/At the very least, I'd suggest putting the chocolate molds on a cooling rack and pointing a fan at them so the air can go over and under them.
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fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Jun 4, 2019 17:08:29 GMT -5
Aarrgh... Well it never gets simpler - I wish I could just point to my tempering technique as inadequate! The thing is that I was really careful with the temps during tempering so I do wonder if air cooling was the problem. Hmm...
Most of my production is milk chocolate which I'm guessing is just generally more tolerant to some of these things since I really haven't had any issues.
Last time I re-tempered dark chocolate in a stainless bowl I did use my refrigerator - I think maybe I will do that from now on if I can just to see if I can rule out air cooling (which actually won't be an option as the temps start to climb here).
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fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Jun 15, 2019 12:07:57 GMT -5
Ben - thank you! I believe refrigeration was they key and I'm much closer to having a "pipeline" in place. My long term goal is to make chocolate with minimal mess, frustration and waste and I am one step closer. So, my current process is: 1. Run melanger until done 2. Temper via cocoa butter seed method in melanger 3. Use syringes to fill all my trays 4. Put trays in fridge for a while I don't believe that tempering in the melanger was the source of the bloom problem I was having, but that it was the lack of proper cooling. It may be hard to tell with my current batch since it is milk chocolate which I've noticed is generally a lot more forgiving, so I may have to wait until I make more dark chocolate to test this theory.
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fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Jun 16, 2019 17:48:33 GMT -5
Hmm... well I made a milk chocolate - I really like it (this is why I make chocolate) and the molded pieces look fine but they are a little on the soft side. I like that for milk chocolate but I think it's a sign that the temper wasn't all that great. This makes me think I have to change a step (lol): 2. Transfer to stainless steel bowl and temper. Ben, so I am coming around - your point about stainless steel is no longer falling on deaf ears =P. I think when I was putting the melanger in a water bath I might have actually been addressing this issue by letting the whole melanger come to thermal equilibrium. This step is a bit of a pain so I probably won't do it again and it doesn't take me that long to mold with the large syringes I got. However, I guess if one did put the melanger in a water bath at around 92F or so it probably would come down to that temperature relatively quicly and would retain that temperature outside of the water bath longer than a stainless steel bowl. I'm not sure it is worth the hassle though just to save the transfer to one more bowl...
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Post by Ben on Jun 17, 2019 9:44:43 GMT -5
Glad to hear it! I think it will simplify things for you. Let us know how it goes.
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