Sebastian

0.5% is often thought of as the max use level in chocolate production, although it's a VERY general rule of thumb. In ganache, i would expect it to be useful at higher levels simply because there's SO much more moisture present than in chocolate (although I've never used lecithin in ganache... so i can't speak from experience). Also note that there are DOZENS of different types of lecithins, and some of them have very different results than others, so much as saying 'use flour' may not be useful to the chef, saying 'use lecithin' may not be as straightforward as it sounds.... why use it? my initial rxn is that it might help prevent seperation in those ganaches that have a tendancy to more easily separate, or may bind excess fluids in those that tend to result in leakers....but again, i've not tried it myself..

Felchlin makes some very, very nice products. I have a lot of respect for them.

I either love Pralus or hate them. When they're on, they're on, but I find them a bit inconsistent. I'm sure it has to do with the difficulties in bean sourcing for the particular types of product they're making.

many spices will have so many starches - and some gums - in them that if you steep them, you get exactly what you're talking about. Some cinnamon powders, for example, are very, very high in these and can form an incredibly thick mass when exposed to hot water.

i've had it turn out fairly soft, as well as fairy crusty. I'm still playing around with oven temps, times, and how long i can let it sit once it's out of the oven before i crack and cut into it 8-)

This is my most recent recipe - i really like this one: 1 c. unbleached ap white flour 1 c. unbleached white bread flour 1 c. ww flour 1 tsp yeast 2 tsp salt 1/8 cup brown sugar, unpacked 1 cup warm milk (i use 1%) 2 - 6 tsp honey ( i don't really measure it - 'some' seemed too vague) 3/4 cup water 1.5 tsp 'italian blend' of mixed italian herbs 450 in covered pot for 30 min, another 15 minutes with cover off.. mmmm

Is it harder to get a dough made with whole wheat flour, or a portion of it made with wwf, to rise and form a nice crumb structure? I've done a few of them now using 1/2 wwf and 1/3 wwf, and i'm having a bear of a time getting it not to end up very dense...

Here's a tried and true one: Sugar 45.6% Water 24% Cocoa 14% Sour cream 14% gelatin 2.5% boil sugar / water 1 minute add cocoa and return to boil add dairy and hydrated gelatin

I did mine in a 6qt stainless steel pot with a copper bottom and a stainless lid..

I decided a few weeks ago i was going to become a bread maker, because i LOVE good bread (Dr. Atkins and I would not have seen eye to eye..), but can't find anything local. So i go out and buy me the biggest kitchen aid mixer i can find in preparation for it. THEN i pay attention to this thread, and discover i really didn't need to go do that 8-) My daughter and I ran 4 experiments, varying the recipe, just to see what would happen - here's a few of what we ended up with - I'm pretty satisfied with the look of them, but we'll need to work out some more flavorful recipes. This is gonna be fun 8-)

yup - after the curtain in the enrober, while the piece is still on the belt, there will be a 'blower'. typically you can control the airspeed, and it's main purpose is to remove excess chocolate so you don't have 60% chocolate, 40% center, but something more appropriate. Note that the air must not be hot air, or you'll detemper your chocolate. Also, you'll need a chocolate with a fairly high yield value on it - if the YV is too low, those ripples will simply fall back on themselves and you'll be back at where you started...

I'd have to give it some thought. I'm not sure I have the proper equipment to non-destructively test for structural differences (ie, my equipment will test structure, but the act of testing it changes it, and so wouldn't likely be measuring what's really going on in the unchanged, intact ganache..). Am open to suggestions tho!

Aw is a measure of how much water is available for microbes to grow, basically. It's not a measure of total water - only that water that is free to enable bacteria, mould, yeast, etc to use for metabolism. If you have a cup of water w/ nothing in it, that cup of water has an Aw of 1.0 - meaning all of it's available for things to use to grow. If you now add 50% of a 42 DE corn syrup to that cup of water, there's actually more water present (you're getting water from the corn syrup in addition to what's in the cup), but the Aw is much, much, much lower now, as the dissolved sugars are ensuring that some of that water is too busy dissolving sugars, and not available for things to use to grow. I've not seen any science to support the use of tempered chocolate as a vehicle for shelf life improvements one way or the other. As Kerry notes, it makes sense that it might, due to what's physically happening during tempering (the cocoa butter forms a certain shape that enables it to pack together very nicely, resulting in a smaller form - ie it shrinks). However, keep in mind that once you're adding a lot of butter fat, you're interfering with both the structure of the cocoa butter crystals (CCB doesn't form one type of crystal, it forms many...) as well as it's ability to pack nicely in a HUGE way - essentially if you've got over about 6% butter fat present, you've just lost the ability to maintain a tempered product. Most cream ganaches will have way more than that. If you throw in nut oils (ie, hazelnut), that compounds the issue.. That's not to say that the use of tempered chocolate to begin with doesn't retain some of that ability to maintain tempered ccb crystal formation in the final product - i know that it does - the amount of which is retained depends largely on how much cream you've added and what you're temperatures have been when doing so, as well as what you do with the ganache after you've made it (room temperature vs cool room vs refridgerate, etc - all make a difference in how the fat crystallizes). Again, not haveing seen any scientific evidence one way or the other, my guess is that this is what would be providing any shelf life differences, and that shelf life here would refer not to microbial stability, but physical product stability (reduced tendancy to separate, reduced tendancy to crack and leak, etc). If someone has seen a scientific study on it, I'd love to read it...the topic might actually make for an interesting masters level investigation..

mmm... that doesn't sound quite right to me. If I run an Aw on ganache made with tempered as well as non tempered chocolate, i'll get the same number (and have). If you're making a ganache with cream, many of the lipids in the cocoa butter are actually soluable in those of the cream, which does all sorts of crazy things to your temper (and is one of the reasons you can't temper a chocolate that has had too much milk fat added to it, by the way). I do buy that using tempered vs untempered can have an effect on structure of the ganache, and subsequently mouthfeel and perhaps appearance (cracking of shells might be inhibited), but not on microbial shelf life...

They must think i have something on them - It's showing up as $99 for me..

This is always a good place to look for equipment: http://www.retailconfectioners.org/content...&module_id=3010 looks like there's a 5" enrober up for grabs if it's not already taken..

I'd also like to point out that because so much sugar has been added to a SCM, that it's AWFULLY hard to get anything to grow in it (meaning you're giong to have a hard time spoiling it). Many industrial users of SCM don't even put it into cold storage, but rather simply use ambient storage, for that exact reason. I've seen tanks of SCM sit for days in the summer time heat, and it's not at all unusual. The bigger danger is one of hydrolytic rancidity, but generally speaking, spoilage organisms aren't the largest concern. a scm that has darkened in color and viscosity probably has taken on a very nice flavor as well. as previously noted, anything with protein and reducing sugars is gonna brown up on you - the older it is and the warmer it's been kept, the more this is going to happen. if you're tempeted to throw it out, just go ahead and send it to me 8-) i'd boil the whole can for a couple of hours and make a great caramel sauce out of it instead!

I suppose it's a bit like everyone else - some of their products i think are fantastic, some not so much 8-)

My other favorite (how many favorites can one have) from Domori is their Carupano. I think it's similiar to Cluizels Mangaro, which I also like (there's a pattern here - most of my favorites are fairly acidic, fruity, lots of red berry/winey notes - I find that most people either really like these are aboslutely can't stand them). Pralus's madagascar and jamacian bars i both like, as well as their sao tome - i find that one has a very unique melting profile that i really enjoy. Valrhona's caraibe and manjara are (or were) also pretty good, but i don't find them nearly as good today as i did in years past.

Domori makes some of my absolute favorite eating chocolates. I love their Sambriano. Amedei does a very nice job as well. Pralus - sometimes I think they're wonderful, othertimes not so much....a bit inconsistent from my perspective, but when they're on, they're on.

Invertase is the enzyme that'll break down the sugars. Invert sugar is a blend of actual sugars.

If taken to the extreme, you can generate unusual textural differences in the chocolate that're visible as well - ie, again, if taken to the extreme, there are instances where you can see things such as the chocolate looking like shale inside (ie the rock) - has a very unusual texture to it!

Those streaks are often called heat streaks. They are usually the result of one of two things: 1) temperature variations w/in the tempered chocolate itself (causes cooling rate differences and thus, crystal growth differences. surface appearance of chocolate has everything to do with the type, size, and distribution of cocoa butter crystals) 2) as cocoa butter crystallizes, it gives off heat. As it melts, it absorbs heat. Sometimes you'll have a situation where a layer of chocolate will crystallize and send out a heat 'wave' of sorts. That melts the adjacent layer completely, causing an endothermic 'wave' quickly solidifying the adjacent layer, which causes that layer to give off heat, and etc etc etc. It can result in a number of different effects in the finished chocolate, one of which is this striated ringing appearance.

yes, for micro reasons. Sugar is only antimicrobial if there's it's present in high enough concentrations to lower the Aw below, oh, say 0.5 or so. If you're adding enough water to a chocolate to get it to be pumpable through a fountain, you're Aw's going to be much, much higher than that...ganache will spoil relatively quickly, and it doesn't have near as much moisture present as would be required for a fountain.. let us know if you decide to go the ganache route - i'd love to hear how it worked out...

The idea of putting that much water into something that has that much sugar that's held at elevated temps makes me nervous...