Post by radwinters on Nov 1, 2007 6:11:21 GMT -5
Hi folks,
I work at my mother's store where she makes various kinds of fruit candy, typically dried fruit dipped in chocolate. We've been experiencing some problems lately with our tempering.
Firstly please excuse my ignorance. I am neither a chemist nor a chef. But I'd like to help my mother figure this out and she does not like to go on the Internet, so I'm trying to do this research for her.
Formerly we were using Ghiradelli chocolate. Mom said that this has something in it called "Trans Fats", which some people do not want because of health reasons, but it helped the chocolate be easier to temper. However, because of the health reasons, she wanted to use a higher quality chocolate. Lately we have been trying to work with Guittard chocolate, milk and dark both.
We have a fancy tempering machine - forgive me, I forgot the brand name, but it is a large industrial type machine, not one of the tiny home-use ones. It cost a couple of thousand dollars or something like that.
The unfortunate problem is that we are now experiencing a LOT of bloom with our finished products. We use the tempering cycle as recommended on the machine, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We have experienced failures with both milk and dark chocolate.
We have attempted to remedy this problem by studying the tempering process, with the books that we have, instead of simply relying on the automated machine process. This has been to no avail. We have studied several different books which recommend various tempering techniques. However, none of these work adequately for us and we have still been experiencing bloom on over fifty percent of our product, which is a waste of time and money and very frustrating as well.
I would like to find out if there is an authoritative procedure for chocolate tempering. I have seen so many different procedures and they all vary slightly. Also they all seemed to be aimed at people who are not using machines. The presumption seems to be that if you use the machine, your chocolate will turn out perfect every time. Sadly this is not the case.
At this point we're considering going back to the Ghiradelli chocolate because at least it came out nicely and we did not waste our chocolate and our time. However I would like to learn to use the Guittard chocolate if possible. BUt it's very frustrating. By the way we have a very controlled environment, no moisture or anything like that in the air, in a sterile professional kitchen.
I would appreciate any enlightened comment on this. Thank you very much!
I work at my mother's store where she makes various kinds of fruit candy, typically dried fruit dipped in chocolate. We've been experiencing some problems lately with our tempering.
Firstly please excuse my ignorance. I am neither a chemist nor a chef. But I'd like to help my mother figure this out and she does not like to go on the Internet, so I'm trying to do this research for her.
Formerly we were using Ghiradelli chocolate. Mom said that this has something in it called "Trans Fats", which some people do not want because of health reasons, but it helped the chocolate be easier to temper. However, because of the health reasons, she wanted to use a higher quality chocolate. Lately we have been trying to work with Guittard chocolate, milk and dark both.
We have a fancy tempering machine - forgive me, I forgot the brand name, but it is a large industrial type machine, not one of the tiny home-use ones. It cost a couple of thousand dollars or something like that.
The unfortunate problem is that we are now experiencing a LOT of bloom with our finished products. We use the tempering cycle as recommended on the machine, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We have experienced failures with both milk and dark chocolate.
We have attempted to remedy this problem by studying the tempering process, with the books that we have, instead of simply relying on the automated machine process. This has been to no avail. We have studied several different books which recommend various tempering techniques. However, none of these work adequately for us and we have still been experiencing bloom on over fifty percent of our product, which is a waste of time and money and very frustrating as well.
I would like to find out if there is an authoritative procedure for chocolate tempering. I have seen so many different procedures and they all vary slightly. Also they all seemed to be aimed at people who are not using machines. The presumption seems to be that if you use the machine, your chocolate will turn out perfect every time. Sadly this is not the case.
At this point we're considering going back to the Ghiradelli chocolate because at least it came out nicely and we did not waste our chocolate and our time. However I would like to learn to use the Guittard chocolate if possible. BUt it's very frustrating. By the way we have a very controlled environment, no moisture or anything like that in the air, in a sterile professional kitchen.
I would appreciate any enlightened comment on this. Thank you very much!