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Post by Alan on Feb 28, 2006 18:23:39 GMT -5
Hello all,
I like milk chocolate, but can't stand the really mild one's that are filled with far more sugar than cocoa solids. So, I am interested in trying a 55% milk chocolate as I believe that I will really like it.
Has anyone tried such a thing, and if so, what proportions of the following ingredients did you use?
Cocoa liquor: Cocoa butter: Milk powder: Sugar: Lecithin: Vanilla: Salt:
I was thinking of doing a .3% lecithin and using about 1/2 bean of vanilla for about 2 lbs of beans (pre-champion and winnow).
Thanks for any tips.
C-L
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Post by Alchemist on Feb 28, 2006 19:08:18 GMT -5
Keeping in mind I am all for strong chocolate.
I was playing around with formulations and I think you might find it is a little difficult to get that much cocoa and milk flavor to balance and get it to flow well. I have not tried one that high - 45% is as high as I have gone with the Santha.
That said, I would start with
33 % cocoa 22 % cocoa butter 28 % sugar 17 % whole milk powder
I think that will get you in the right area, but you may have to play with adding a little more cocoa butter at refining to get it to move well.
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Post by Alchemist on Feb 28, 2006 19:23:09 GMT -5
Oh, and starting with 2 lbs (and taking into account husk lose and Champion lose)
1.1 lb cocoa 15.3 oz sugar 12 oz cocoa butter 3 g lecithin 9.2 oz milk powder
And in case you were wondering, I whipped that out with a "chocolate calculator" I am working on making available.
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Post by Alan on Mar 3, 2006 9:24:39 GMT -5
Dear John,
Thanks for your feedback. I'll experiment with these proportions.
One quick further question, I have a lot of non-fat milk powder. Could I simply use this and add some milk fat, or would it be in my best interests to track down some of the whole milk powder?
Thanks,
C-L
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Post by Brad on Mar 3, 2006 11:36:25 GMT -5
Alan;
Maybe I can help you here. I've made chocolate with both skim and whole milk powder. What you need to do is keep the end goal of about 39% fat content in mind. Whole milk contains about 28% fat, so if you use skim milk powder, then you will need to augment it with anhydrous milk fat (ghee, clarified butter, or whatever else you want to call it).
For example: if your recipe calls for 20% milk powder, you can use 20% whole milk powder, or 15% skim milk powder and 5% clarified butter. This should give you very close to the result you are looking for.
That being said, many organic food stores carry whole milk powder.
Hope this helps.
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Post by Alan on Mar 3, 2006 11:52:07 GMT -5
Alan; Maybe I can help you here. I've made chocolate with both skim and whole milk powder. What you need to do is keep the end goal of about 39% fat content in mind. Whole milk contains about 28% fat, so if you use skim milk powder, then you will need to augment it with anhydrous milk fat (ghee, clarified butter, or whatever else you want to call it). For example: if your recipe calls for 20% milk powder, you can use 20% whole milk powder, or 15% skim milk powder and 5% clarified butter. This should give you very close to the result you are looking for. That being said, many organic food stores carry whole milk powder. Hope this helps. Dear Brad, Thanks for the tip. I'll just buy some whole milk powder to make it easier on myself. C-L
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Post by Alan on Mar 16, 2006 20:55:18 GMT -5
Hello all, Well, I've decided that I'm going to do a 50% rather than a 55%. I started paying attention to the percentages of some of the stronger milk chocolates and noticed that most didn't go above 45% such as the excellent "Melissa" bar by Pralus. However, I did find two: Michel Cluizel's Mangaro Lait (50%): www.cluizel.com/eng/det_gamme.php?idg=2&idp=107Michael Recchiuti's Milk (55%): www.recchiuti.com/cgi-bin/chocolate/shop/product.html?mv_arg=prod_code%3d819895%2d000053As far as milk chocolates go, I hear excellent things about both. I will soon know for myself, and will be better able to know what to expect from a high percentage milk chocolate. I'll let everyone know how mine turns out too. C-L
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 17, 2006 8:05:34 GMT -5
The mangaro will be very different from anything you've had to date. The beans used in that bar (among one of my favorites to use in dark, btw). I find it to be a bit of a strange combination with the milk, but it's very unique nontheless. Experiment with different milk powders. Some places have caramel powders (caramel's simply dehydrated sweetened condensed milk, right?) - you might want to try those as well..
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Post by Alan on Mar 17, 2006 8:34:49 GMT -5
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Post by Alan on Mar 17, 2006 10:44:51 GMT -5
Wow,
I just discovered that Bonnat makes a trinity of 65% dark milk chocolates from different areas. I wish that I had noticed that sooner. Well, I'll try them sooner than later. Has any one else tried them?
C-L
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Post by Alan on Mar 17, 2006 20:39:34 GMT -5
Well, The Santha is packed iwth 5 lbs. of delicious 50% milk chocolate. I'm going to run it until tomorrow morning, and then as long as the mouth feel is what I'm looking for at that point--I think it will be--I'll be unscrewing the Santha top cap and conching for another 48 hours, only heating intermittently if the friction is reduced so much that the viscosity increases greatly. Then, I'm going to use a Santha tempering method. More on that when I figure out the particular way that I'll temper. I don't think that I'll go the overnight route. We'll see. At any rate, look forward to photos of the finished product on monday at some point. C-L
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Post by Alan on Mar 18, 2006 21:59:11 GMT -5
I realized that I forgot to give the percentages that I'm using for my 50% milk chocolate: 30% liquor 30% sugar 20% cocoa butter 19.7% milk (including 15% non-fat powder and 4.7% clarified butter) .3% lecithin vanilla (sorry, I didn't measure the amount ) So far so good! First I refined/conched it for 24 hours straight, and now it is nice and smooth and is conching sans Santha top-cap for at least 24 more hours, and perhaps 48. It depends on how it tastes tomorrow. So far I can already tell that a somewhat distasteful sour note, I think from the milk, has dissipated greatly whereas it was quite strong at first. It tastes pretty good, but I will definitely go higher with the liquor amount next time. I have been playing with numbers, but I want to push the liquor up to 45% or maybe even higher. 45% will be my starting point next time though. Thanks for listening. C-L
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Post by Alan on Mar 19, 2006 19:11:36 GMT -5
Alright, it's done. I'll post a photo of a bar in a bit. One change that I did make is that I didn't add any lecithin to the chocolate at the end as I planned on doing at first. I decided that since I used lecithin last time, that I would not use it this time to see if I notice a difference. In terms of the tempering method, I tempered in the Santha as follows. I turned off the Santha, let it cool down to about 95. I poured out about 1/2 (since the Santha holds a decent amount of heat and I wanted to compensate) of the chocolate and worked it on my silestone slab until it was quite thick and almost hard. Then I broke it up into chunks and added it back to the Santha. I turned it on (with the top cap off) and let it mix until the chocolate was all melted. I then had chocolate that was about 87.5 degrees. I then molded. If I had been smart, I would have followed John's method of leaving the Santha bowl in the machine and I would have left it running while I was filling the molds. As it was, I was thinking that the granite would hold enough heat (since it does hold a bit) and though it did fairly well, it would have been better if I would have kept the chocolate moving/stirring. At any rate, I am quite happy with the flavor and texture, and actually I don't think I 'll go higher than this for a milk chocolate. I really find it to be "just right" at 50% as per my above formulation. At any rate, next time I'll try the same recipe with the Ocumare. Stay tuned for a photo. Edited to note: The temper is apparently not perfect. You'll see a photo. It seems that I must review milk chocolate tempering again. C-L
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Post by Alan on Mar 19, 2006 20:03:10 GMT -5
Regarding the imperfect temper:
I think that I may have taken the temperature too high in the end. The milk fat level was fairly high in my formulation and I took it to 87.5. However, I am still using my glass thermometer, and I am not certain of the accuracy. The temperature could, therefore, easily have gone over 88 or even higher. I guess I'm going to break down and buy a new thermometer afterall.
C-L
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Post by sugaralchemy on May 27, 2006 21:33:23 GMT -5
You may want to try cooling the whole santha container until the chocolate is quite thick (basically as thick as is workable - use your judgement), then running the santha again (the friction heating effect) and very closely watching temperatures, basically leaving the machine running nonstop until the desired temperature is reached, then molding immediately without adding any additional heat or running the santha further. That can produce chocolate that is incredibly well tempered, some may say the chocolate is too tempered - the chocolate is very hard and brittle, almost able to be "shattered" if you hit it right, especially if the cocoa butter content is on the higher side.
You may want to calibrate your thermometer(s) with ice water before using, and possibly consider using two of them if you are in doubt. There is not a whole lot of room for margin with this stuff. I have several thermometers myself, which I have both calibrated and compared side to side. I love the digital type, while you have batteries and more points of failure, they are 100% objective - no subjective reading that can vary depending on angle.
Also, as far as the viscosity situation goes, if you really want to achieve a really high solids (milk powder, lots of chocolate liquor, and enough sugar to make it good leave little room for added cocoa butter) and keep the viscosity sane, PGPR is absolutely amazing. It is great stuff and works at fairly low levels, usually paired with lecithin. I'd start at 0.3% lecithin and 0.3% PGPR. Going too high will at least partially reverse the benefits of viscosity reduction, and too little obviously won't be effective, so play around a bit. PGPR can really enable you to achieve tastes and textures that would be otherwise impossible.
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