pastrygirl

That's funny, I was going to suggest a little less flour if they seem doughy. But I'm not familiar with the one you're trying to mimic. Another thought, are you letting them come to room temp before baking? Since they are so big, they'll stay cold in the middle longer if they're straight out of the fridge or freezer. Hang in there! New kitchens are always challenging, not knowing the quirks of the equipment or where anything is.

Unless it’s completely dry all the way through, you’ll lose any crisp exterior soon after packaging.

What else are you good at and which hemisphere are you in? Here, summer equals wedding season so I work with a couple of caterers to provide desserts for their clients. It keeps me out of trouble.

Agreed, dont trust restaurants to be celiac-safe. Those gluten free menus might be fine for the whole 30, clean-eating, low-carb, GF=healthy, and other bandwagon-jumpers, but you’ll want to makes sure any food your son eats cones from a certified GF kitchen.

Caramel has a lot of sugar, so that helps.

The fluidity of caramel is determined by water content. Are you familiar with the cooking stages of sugar - thread, soft ball, soft crack, hard crack, etc? If you cook sugar and water together, as the water evaporates the temp goes up and the finished product is harder. The water in a soft caramel or caramel sauce comes from cream or milk; if you cook it all away you will have hard candy. Or if you cook sugar and butter to caramel, it will be a hard toffee not a sauce.

If there was no water, what would make it saucy?

@Jim D. that sounds delicious! Glad it worked for you.

Good luck! Commissaries aren't always the best-taken care of - go ahead and clean that oven window so you can watch your cookies. Are you in a state that does not have a cottage food law to allow some home baking? You've probably already considered it, but I'll throw it out there anyway... http://www.pickyourown.org/CottageFoodLawsByState.htm

Once you get to know the oven and how to adjust from your usual times & temps, those adjustments should apply across the board. If it runs hot, it will run hot for everything.

A cooler with ice should be sufficient.

@prashamk, did you roast the almonds separately? Roasting brings out more flavor ... assuming you want roasted nut flavor Well, you could take it off the heat and stop the cooking, drop a little on a cool plate or in cold water and taste it. Where there's a will, there's a way!

If you were a line cook and the ovens you used were the type under the cook-top, those may be different from the free-standing baker's ovens. I used to bake in an old gas wolf range's oven and though the fan did have a separate switch, I honestly never tried baking without it on (if memory serves I think it wouldn't ignite without the fan on). What sorts of things would you prefer to bake/cook without the fan? As a pastry chef the only thing I used the still oven for was baked custards like creme brulee, so I'm used to all convection all the time. Now on the rare occasion that I bake something at home, it takes foreeeeeever. They might be a little more even than still ovens but they all have their quirks. Generally when the door opens the fan automatically shuts off so you're not blowing tons of heat out. It should only take a few seconds to rotate a pan, don't sweat it.

You could try adding almond extract to the hot caramelized sugar, it should be hot enough to evaporate the liquid.

Not my experience. My current kitchen has an electric convection oven with no options for the fan, other convection ovens have had the option of high or low fan. Commercial baking ovens are different from the home ovens with the option of convection. Unfortunately I think you’ll just need to do some test baking to get used to your rental ovens. Start with just a few cookies till you’re happy, then do a full sheet and see if it needs adjusting. Mike is right in that no oven bakes perfectly evenly. Top rack may be hotter, or the back corner, etc. Always rotate! Will you be able to get a better deal on space as you use more hours? If you’re already worried about test batches eating up the profit, maybe you need to charge more. Or make a 5 oz cookie, that’s still huge!

I'd try the pecan pie with peanut butter, bacon, and salted caramel. That funnel cake with pink glaze is terrifying.

The caramel looks a little dark, if you’re getting an unpleasant aftertaste simply caramelize the sugar to a lighter color next time. Otherwise, isn’t slightly burnt sugar flavor what you wanted when you caramelized it? As for grinding the nuts into a paste, that can take a while, especially with the added sugar. Just keep going! Many of us have the wet grinders designed for the Indian market to grind rice and lentils for idli and dosa. If you have access to one of those, it should take that powder and turn it into a completely smooth paste. A food processor will get it 90% smooth if you let it run long enough but there may still be a few small hard bits. And if it really refuses to turn into paste, you could add some more fat. Almond oil, flavorless cooking oil, coconut oil, melted cocoa butter etc.

Right. Nut butter plus liquid caramel sauce is probably delicious, but praline paste would not normally include liquid. If the praline has only nut oil and no water, it can be mixed into chocolate and tempered like gianduja. If there is water from milk or cream and you mix the paste into chocolate, you’ll get a softer ganache. Water in the mix isn’t necessarily bad, but it means shorter shelf life and different applications.

This sounds very ambitious. Is air-conditioning in the kitchen part of the budget? Or is there enough separation that you have a cool place to work with chocolate while the oven is on baking croissants all morning and cakes all afternoon? If the focus is chocolate confections I think chocolate should take priority over pastries. Do you really need a sheeter and viennoiserie on the menu or would it be better to spend on chocolate equipment and keep the baked goods more simple? Is it a bakery with chocolate or a chocolate shop with pastry? How will you schedule production so you're not trying to mold bonbons next to an oven running at 200C? Are you making the chocolate bean-to-bar or is the couverture produced elsewhere?

Yeah, someone was saying that they got some beans for a great price at $3 each and I was thinking that's not such a great price. But then I went and counted the number of beans in the half pound I recently bought and turns out they were about $2 each wholesale. So $3 retail isn't that unreasonable!

Are you referring to the method of making a sugar syrup, adding nuts and stirring until the sugar crystallizes then continuing to cook and stir until the sugar caramelizes? That's a nice way to get nuts that are individually coated, but if you're going to grind it all up into paste you could simply caramelize the sugar then pour it over the nuts and grind them together and save yourself the stirring.

Cleaner is usually just water, or a no-rinse sanitizer. The other table is fine. I'm sure they were both acquired used.

The commercial kitchen I'm in has two prep tables, both seemingly stainless steel, but one of them gives off a grey residue. If I roll dough on it the dough turns grey. When I wipe it down to clean it, my rag turns grey. It's otherwise a super clean kitchen and I am cleaning continually throughout my day, so it's not accumulated grime. What's up with this? Is it not actually stainless steel? Is there any cure besides always using cutting board or parchment?

Usually bonbons are filled with ganache. If you want to get fancy other than decorating with colors, you can try layers. Two different ganaches, or one ganache plus one caramel, pate de fruits, marshmallow, or gianduja. To color your own cocoa butter, you need fat-soluble dry powder colors. Some people here use them, I still opt for convenience and buy the pre-made colored cocoa butters.

@mebinsf, what kind of volume are you thinking? Something you'll make a few dozen or hundred of, or are we talking distribution by the case? I've made a hot chocolate mix the past few winters that is mostly cocoa powder and sugar but does have dark chocolate ground into it. I make it the food processor with the blade. All the dry stuff keeps the chocolate from melting and sticking back together. I start with feves or pistoles that are already small. If you have large blocks or less cocoa/sugar, something else might be better.