pastrygirl

It's frustrating. We're in a niche that the inspectors don't understand any more than we do. I recently had my WA dept of Ag inspection, I wasn't making ganache that day and she didn't ask about it. Later I emailed to ask if they had info on aW, response was 'I googled and found this' - yeah, thanks, I have google too 😆 I think you need to look at bonbons as another shelf stable product, which you intend them to be. Then aW is a quality issue first. You don't want moldy bonbons for your own sake. Inspectors seem more concerned about cross-contamination of allergens and general cleanliness.

Like Kerry, I often melt chocolate in the microwave, in glass/pyrex. My microwave is not particularly powerful (900w?) so 60% power is usually safe but you might need to go down to 50 or 40% with higher wattage. Length of time proportional to amount of chocolate. White chocolates and Valrhona's fruit inspirations thicken and scorch much more easily than dark or milk so I'm extra-careful with those. Strawberry inspiration is the weirdest, I guess I blame the product and user error over the heat source 🤷‍♀️ But I'm usually melting chocolate to be mixed into ganache & used immediately, if you need to keep it in temper for a while, a melter/warmer and a heat gun or hair dryer will be really helpful. I hope that works better for you!

Would you like help with that, or did you just want to vent?

Welcome! But that's ridiculous, by that rule cheese would not exist. No restaurant or bakery is throwing away all their unused butter at the end of the week. What types of products are you currently making, and what agency are you licensed/inspected by? aW values will help you determine how to handle your product but I'd be surprised if anyone asked for them.

Kinda nasty. Definitely an opportunity for cross-contamination of allergens, and do you really want to add a few drops of sanitizer to your food every time? Rick is looking sharp, though.

That's exactly why I got a Selmi ... But even with the continuous tempering machine, I don't think I've made more than 30 molds in a day. (working alone and doing the whole paint-shell-fill-cap process in the same day) I've managed the melter by warming the chocolate with a hair dryer, increasing the heat between batches, and/or having a second melter with warmer, untempered chocolate to replenish the supply as needed. Are you doing 100 molds a week? A month?

@Jim D. right, I’ll use the one size fits all list unless I hear differently from the FDA. My assortments usually include the whole rainbow, I did do a couple of single-flavor boxes for Easter, in that case I’d only list the few colors used.

Following up, my WSDA inspector did approve listing all the colors combined as one ingredient. 👍 So that'll add a few lines to some labels but not a total nightmare.

Well, there are only so many pigments approved for food use, here's Chef Rubber's info, looks like they don't use red #3. G3/E143 is a green.

Sure, but 23 colors of CB are made up of the same 10 ingredients. For example, Webstaurant store has spec sheets for a bunch of Roxy & Rich colors. I found 11 colors that I currently use: red ruby: CB, mica based pearlescent pigment (mbpp), red #40 orange garnet: CB, mbpp, yellow #6 yellow chrysoberyl: CB, mbpp, yellow #5 gold: CB, mbpp, yellow #5, yellow #6, red #40, blue #2 green sphene: CB, mbpp, yellow #5, blue #1 turquoise: CB, mbpp, blue #1, yellow #5 aquamarine: CB, mbpp, blue #1 blue sapphire: CB, mbpp, blue #2 purple amethyst: CB, mbpp, red #3, blue #2, red #40, rice protein pirate black: CB, blue #2, red #40, yellow #6, blue #1, yellow #5 white zircon: CB, mbpp, titanium dioxide but if I don't have to list each color separately, I could just say colored cocoa butters (CB, mbpp, red #40, yellow #6, yellow #5, blue #2, blue #1, red #3, titanium dioxide, rice protein) I'll check with the inspector if that's ok

you can also add more fat to the Alunga to make it more fluid, or mix Alunga & Bahibe to suit your price point.

Are you taking the pan out of the melter to cool? I put mine on my marble slab or even in the fridge if I'm in a hurry.

@Jim D. her concern was with a box of bonbons packaged for retail. I think the theory is that when buying from a bakery you can ask the maker but when a product is on a shelf in a store it needs to have all the info because even though it's not a top allergen, people have "sensitivities". I did recently have someone who said red food color gave him heart palpitations. At the time I did not check the specific colors, he bought bonbons anyway. I don't think it's serious enough that they'll make me do a recall, more of a 'you really should be doing this' (I hope). I haven't gone through all my CB colors ingredients yet, but I'd guess it's all the same several pigments in different proportions. Red, yellow, blue, black, white. Currently to save space & redundancy I list all the bonbon ingredients together, so listing all the colors once wouldn't be that bad. I've been thinking about creating a bonbon guide with separate ingredients for each flavor, that's going to take A LOT more space. Another thing we should be doing is tracking our raw ingredients so that if one of those gets recalled we know what batch of our products to recall. I can sort of wrap my head around this for single products but can't quite compute how to do that with an assorted box. Probably requires software and QR codes ...

Do you list the individual colors on your ingredients? Apparently we are supposed to ... https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/color-additives-questions-and-answers-consumers My dept of Ag stopped by today & told me that - I think I wasn't using so many colors at my last inspection, never thought much about it since they're not on the allergen list.

More vegan experiments. I found oat and soy milk powders without extra ingredients. Close to equal parts by weight sugar (1/2 of it brown), CB, and oat milk powder with a touch of salt. Pretty sweet, mildly oat-y, medium fluidity. Valrhona Orelys for color comparison. Used it to make bonbons with strawberry ganache. (valrhona fraise, more oat white, a little cranberry concentrate, oat creamer) They're not bad. It's pretty tasty on its own and I'd pair it with dark chocolate but the oat could be distracting in some uses. soy milk powder batch, Valrhona Dulcey for color comparison I reduced the sugar slightly, maybe if I hadn't there wouldn't be the very slight bean-iness. But less bean-y than the oat is oat-y so pretty bland in a good way Did not try any shells or ganache with it yet. I ran these both for about 7 hours, how long do other people melange white chocolate for?

I've had issues when the burner is smaller than the pot and the sugar doesn't heat evenly.

mini baguette giant eclair puffy coat

I guess nobody told him to smile? 😉

I'd say no, or not immediately. Work full time for a few years then see what you still need to learn. I don't know how much culinary school teaches about the business side, but business is another set of skills and college can also be useful.

I agree that it looks doughy and under- baked

No problem. It took a ton of cocoa butter to get moving and was ... interesting. Could be good with real butter or peanuts & caramel a la Cracker Jack. I didn't end up using it for that particular project (which was dairy-free, nut-free) but there's potential.

Unfortunately you may have to eat some directly off the dasher.

Trader Joe's Indian foods tend to be pretty good, both the shelf stable packets and frozen. I also like TJ frozen falafel patties with a bit of yogurt and some greens or crudite. TJ's frozen tamales are just ok, I like these better https://tucsontamale.com/pages/store-locator

I keep a few of these around for work lunches, can vouch for chicken-feta-farro, chicken sausage-barley, green goddess. If I'm hungry I might add an egg or two. Salt and hot sauce to taste. Grocery Outlet usually has a couple varieties for around $2.50 each. https://www.healthychoice.com/power-bowls-products

do you remember how recent the issue was? there's a sebastien lesage in January's issue ... https://www.lejournaldupatissier.com/recipe-index https://www.patisserie-lesage.com/fr/chocolats-annemassse-74.php