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Post by Alan on Feb 17, 2006 15:20:19 GMT -5
Dear all,
Someone just pointed a quote out to me:
"Correct temperature does not mean that the correct crystalline form is present, but if the correct crystalline form is present, the chocolate is in a specific temperature zone." --Jean-Pierre Wybauw
I believe that Jean-Pierre Wybauw's point is that time and movement are equally important when it comes to tempering chocolate as temperature is. Therefore, temperature alone cannot tell you when the chocolate is tempered, though if everything else is done correctly, and the chocolate is tempered, then it will be within the correct range.
This is good advice, I think. I have noticed that Minifie and Beckett have also both focused, in different ways, on time and movement, in addition to temperature. When tempering my last batch, I made sure to stir constantly and well for about 10 minutes, attempting to have the chocolate be as homogeneous as possible and spread the stable beta V crystals out into the chocolate as well as possible. Additionally, I cooled the molded chocolate quickly in the refrigerator, which as I understand it, is a very good method for making sure that during the cooling process beta VI and less stable crystals are only minimally formed. Everything seems to have worked for me, and I have experienced clean snaps, very good gloss, and no bloom at all for this batch.
So, it seems like stirring the chocolate well during tempering for a decent period of time (maybe 10 minutes??) as the temperature reduces, and then quick cooling may have these positive effects, in addition to correct temperature.
Just some thoughts.
Sincerely,
Alan
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Post by Sebastian on Feb 17, 2006 16:06:07 GMT -5
Agitation is absolutely important (there's a reason you constantly scrape the chocolate while tempering on a marble slab, and there's a reason that small tempering units have rotating bowls, for example). 10 minutes of agitation is likely overkill for the quantities you're likely to be doing at home on a batch basis (if i'm tempering 20 lbs of chocolate in an aluminum pan using the hotplate/cooling tunnel method previously described, i agitate it (scrape and mix with a spatula) about once very 5 minutes until i reach my targets), but agitation is what thoroughly distributes your seed crystals throughout the mass, allowing the liquid butter that's present to pattern itself after the properly formed seed crystals (hence the term "seed" crystal). The other reason is to allow for homogeneous heat distribution - you don't want some areas of the mass to be hot, and some areas to be cold, for example. Edit - i should point out that excess agitation isn't going to harm your product, however. It's just going to make your arm tired
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Post by Alchemist on Feb 17, 2006 17:25:58 GMT -5
4 chocolatiers, 5 ways to temper ;D
And nothing like tossing potentially conflicting advise in here.
In a couple batches of chocolate I have done, quick cooling seemed to have been a detriment to the tempering process. I don't know if I had insufficint beta V crystals, so what, but when quickly cooled, the chocolate did not temper. When left at room temperature to set up, the temper was fine.
All I can come up with is that the quick cooling did not give the cocoa butter time to grow into the proper matrix, instead giving an amorphous glass like structure. The slow cooled chocolate had time to form the matrix properly.
I am not saying everyone should slow cool, just that it solved a problem for me.
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Post by Sebastian on Feb 17, 2006 20:24:24 GMT -5
My question for the guy in the factory "when did you calibrate your thermometer last?" I have all my thermometers checked against a standardized thermometer monthly, and calibrate all of them annually. 'Tis overkill for the home user, but I need to have 100% certainty.
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Post by Brad on Feb 18, 2006 3:36:44 GMT -5
- Another emoticon here, and rightfully so. I'm making milk chocolate, and have been told that my recipe choice puts me at the extreme edge of "hard to temper". I agree and have rightfully been having trouble. So.... I broke down and bought a Chocovision Rev 2 the other day. It's not the best and I'll probably receive some flak by mentioning it, but it's the only one I could find in Canada. Hmmmm.... market possibilities John? ? Anyway, I'll keep you posted as to how and how well it works. In the meantime, does someone have some suggestions for tempering temperatures for very milky milk chocolate? Thanks in advance for your reply. Brad.
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Post by Sebastian on Feb 18, 2006 6:46:15 GMT -5
Remember how we discussed the temperature curve (up, down, up again)? On the down portion of the curve, go lower. Instead of going to, say 82F, take it to 78F. Then on the subsequent up curve, instead of going to say 89F, only go to 87F. Those temeperatures may not be the exact ones that work for you (you'll have to play around with temps to find your sweet spot a bit - general rule of thumb, the more free milk fat you've got in the game, the lower your tempering profiles will need to be. I wouldn't ever take your free mlk fat over 5%..i forget how much you've got in there now...)
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Post by Alchemist on Feb 20, 2006 16:46:19 GMT -5
I am just going to tantilize with this. I plan to give more detail later.
I successfully tempered in my Santha this weekend, using it as the mixer.
I used a thermometer, but it turned out I didn't even need it based on knowing where chocolate equilibrates in the Santha (110 F)
The main "trick" was removing the top retaining nut so no further refining occured, just stirring and homoginizing.
More later.....
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Post by Brad on Feb 23, 2006 19:32:24 GMT -5
Update on the Chocovision Rev 2....
It arrived in one piece - well packed and with some extra pieces and chocolate to start with.
It's small. Very small. ....and expensive ($800 CDN)
However.....
If you have more money than brains, and are interested in a super easy way to temper a couple of pounds of chocolate at a time, it works great and is as easy as pushing a button.
It melts, heats, stirs, cools, and then reheats a couple of pounds of chocolate perfectly in less than a half hour. This afternoon I molded 4 lbs of chocolate in between phone calls and other business, and didn't have to babysit the machine at all!
It has two temper settings - one for normal chocolate, and one for "hard to temper" chocolate, where it drops the "temper" temperature of the chocolate to 84.7 degrees before raising it up again.
Even though it's automatic, it still allows you to adjust the lower temperature to whatever you want in 10ths of a degree, and the upper end in single degrees. I tempered a batch of my hard to work with milk chocolate and a batch of dark chocolate, and it was super easy!
My only complaint is that for the price I paid, I was expecting something in stainless steel, and not plastic. I guess I'll just have to pay more attention to taking care of it.
As it stands right now, I have a table full of gorgeously tempered chocolates, and never once had to babysit the chocolate or play with a thermometer. Cool!
Have a great day.
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Post by Sebastian on Feb 23, 2006 20:03:15 GMT -5
Here's what might be another option for you (this is a bunch of do it yer selfers, right?) - build your own. Visit hilliards web site and look at how their little dipper product is made. Essentially its a metal bowl set into a cabinet attached to a small motor that rotates it at a constant rate. Also inside the cabinet it a heat source (a light bulb) attached to a thermocouple and a varistor on a graduated scale of degrees. You should be able to build this for a couple hundred bucks. Go to an appliance repair shop and take the used motor off an old drying machine (20 bucks). Bulid the cabinet yourself (50 bucks), but a commercially available metal bowl (10 bucks), and visit radio shack for the thermocouple and IC circuits to control the temperature (30 bucks - i'm guessing at all the prices here). I've seen one person spec it out (she's a collegue of mine with a chocolate company on the west coast), but she never actually built it, i think it was more of a pet project to see if it was feasible for the common joe, who didn't have a electrical engineering degree. should be very doable. Course, the little dippers not a tempering machine per se, but if you've got some tempered chocolate to begin with, you can use it to seed your home made mass.
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Post by Brad on Mar 4, 2006 12:44:09 GMT -5
Another question here:
Has anyone every tried to temper 100% Cocoa Butter? If so, what are/were the results and why?
There are very distinct reasons for my question, which I will disclose later.
Thanks for the input.
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Post by Alan on Mar 4, 2006 13:14:00 GMT -5
Another question here: Has anyone every tried to temper 100% Cocoa Butter? If so, what are/were the results and why? There are very distinct reasons for my question, which I will disclose later. Thanks for the input. Is your idea to reserve cocoa butter from the formulation, temper it and then add it to the chocolate later as seed while at the same time not altering the flavor of the chocolate as would seed chocolate? An added bonus would be if tempering cocoa butter is easier than tempering chocolate. I don't know if this is the case though. Alan
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Post by Brad on Mar 4, 2006 19:14:50 GMT -5
Alan;
Not at all. My premise is that I have a chocolate fountain and it's necessary to thin the viscosity of the chocolate with oil so that it flows through the machine without siezing it. Once oil is added to chocolate, it is technically not chocolate anymore, but a compound. On top of that, if we are going through all the effort to buy the beans, roast them, mix and grind everything, etc, etc, why adulterate it with oil.
My last batch of fondue chocolate was thinned with clarified butter, which of course made it untemperable because the milk fat content was too high. My theory is: 1. If chocolate is tempered by properly aligning the cocoa butter crystals, AND 2. cocoa butter melts, AND 3. cocoa butter can be substituted for clarified butter or oil in a fondue/fountain chocolate THEN I should be able to create a TRUE chocolate that will work in a chocolate fountain without having to adulterate it with anything else.
Thoughts anyone???
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 4, 2006 19:58:45 GMT -5
Perfectly acceptible. You can buy such a thing commercially today (after all, it's essentially just a high fat chocolate). Of course, at the temperature your fountain operates at, the chocolate won't be tempered.
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Post by Brad on Mar 5, 2006 12:38:38 GMT -5
Sebastian;
Here in Calgary, you can't buy anything like that. One Chocolatier here (Bernard Callebaut) sells a chocolate for chocolate fountains that he supplies a recipe with (he suggests cream - oh boy! 4 1/2 lbs of ganache'!) However I was thinking something more of a "pure" temperable product that can withstand sitting on a shelf or in a pantry unti such time as it's used without melting or blooming.
I don't really care what happens AFTER it's put in the fountain, but rather more of the shelf life and care BEFORE.
I guess it's safe to assume then, that I COULD increase the CCB content and make a chocolate specific for this purpose which is in fact temperable and storage friendly?
Thanks in advance for your reply.
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 5, 2006 16:09:41 GMT -5
absolutely.
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