rna
Neophyte
Posts: 4
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Post by rna on Mar 9, 2011 9:47:41 GMT -5
I am making about 4 lbs of dark chocolate from 2 pounds of cocoa liquor. Here is the recipie I used:
2 lbs cocoa liquor 1.5 lbs sugar 9 ozs cocoa butter
I conched this in the Santha for about 8 hours and it looked really thick, so I added 3 more ozs melted cocoa butter, and conched another 2 hours.
The taste is great (the beans were Ecuador '10 Forastero), the melted chocolate was at 106 degrees during the conching process. The result was quite smooth, no trace of grittiness. However, after cooling, the texture of the chocolate is that of a really thick paste, no solidity or "snap" whatsoever. Did I add too much cocoa butter for this batch to temper properly?? Can I fix this?
Thanks, Regina
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 9, 2011 18:43:09 GMT -5
You can never add too much cocoa butter, and result in a chocolate that won't temper. In fact, the more cocoa butter that's present, the easier it will be to temper.
Are you familiar with the specifics behind tempering?
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nat
Neophyte
Posts: 19
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Post by nat on Mar 10, 2011 14:17:25 GMT -5
It won't have snap until you run it through the tempering process which it doesn't sound like you did if you just let it cool from 106° F down to room temp. Check the inumerable threads on here for how to temper. It helps to make sure you have low (<50%) humidity in the place where you grind and temper the chocolate, but as Sebastian said, more cocoa butter will only make it easier. You have 18% cocoa butter which is above average, but not abnormal by any means. -Nat ____________________ Nat Bletter, PhD Chocolate R&D Madre Chocolate madrechocolate.com
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rna
Neophyte
Posts: 4
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Post by rna on Mar 12, 2011 9:18:56 GMT -5
Thanks to you both. I did read about the crystal packing that occurs during tempering, thanks. I also saw recipes that had up to 20% cocoa butter, so I knew I was in the correct range - but I still had trouble tempering even after re-tempering by bringing my chocolate up to 120 degrees to break any and all cocoa butter crystals so they could reform into the optimal beta form, and then I seeded this with tempered chocolate at around 104 degrees. This batch did come out better (not pasty) but lwith ow gloss and moderate snap.
As an experiment I tried to temper pure cocoa butter and I did not get that to have any sort of snap. I brought that up to 125 degrees and allowed to cool to about 90, did not seed but worked it on a granite slab, and never got a good temper. But I'm not sure pure cocoa butter is supposed to temper anyhow.
I any case, today I am trying another batch of dark chocolate today and will heat up to 125 degrees. It is very low humidity today which can only help.
Thanks for the comments, Regina
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 12, 2011 14:36:23 GMT -5
When you temper your chocolate, it's actually the cocoa butter in it that you're tempering - so yes, pure cocoa butter will absolutely temper
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Post by oaxacalote on Mar 14, 2011 5:32:43 GMT -5
Regina, if you're not using seed, then cool the chocolate to 80-82 before reheating to 90. Using the granite slab is only useful if you're dropping the chocolate on the slab to 80-82 before reintroducing it to the batch. For simplicity's sake, melt the whole batch, drop to 80-82, then reheat to 90. The folks here know what they're doing and will get you there. Search the forum for old threads and you will find many detailed suggestions for tempering from Brad, Sebastian, Cheebs, Nat, and others. They've explained it before. Good luck!
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rna
Neophyte
Posts: 4
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Post by rna on Mar 14, 2011 19:56:40 GMT -5
Thanks, y'all. Yes, I did get the pure cocoa butter to temper, it just had a lower melting point than I expected and so felt "softer" than I initially thought it should.
I also tempered a chunk of chocolate 3 x 3 x 3, by heating to 110 degrees and then cooling completely to RT. Conching longer than 10 hours definitely helped to gain snap on the final product (which I learned from this forum!).
great posts here, this is a trove ~ -Regina
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