HQAntithesis
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Posts posted by HQAntithesis
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Glucose syrup is about 10% water but the remaining quantity is a mixture of maltose and dextrose. The proportions will probably differ from brand to brand but I think it's more important in confectionary because one of them colours faster than the other.
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It's a little more time consuming, but if you want you can use a guitar sheet or acetate to cap your chocolates. It makes for the most 'perfect' finish and also allows you to have more filling and a less thick base. You ladle chocolate on just one edge of the mould, put the plastic so that it covers the open surface of the mould and then, using a squeegee or triangle spatula, pull the chocolate across to the other side. Not sure how understandable that explanation is...
That leaves a slight dimple though so if you're really fussy you can go over it twice and then it becomes really really flat.
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Hiya mroybal, can't say pizzas are quite my area but I'd love to give your recipe a try if you don't mind sharing it!
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The correct term is probably feathering, although it's usually done in a more regular pattern like in mille feuilles. If you wanted a marble effect without needing to make an excess of glaze, you could swirl your fingers through it rather than use a toothpick.
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Try the Belgian based Corman group for anhydrous butter. That's what we often use here in Australia.
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As far as recipes go, a carefully prepared clarified butter should be a close enough approximation to the real deal. This butter can be used in bonbons, puff pastry and other laminated products and is good in that you can better control the amount of water in your products that way. You usually can't substitute a standard 82% fat butter into a anhydrous butter recipe and vice versa.
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If the pattern was made from a mould, wouldn't it be more likely to have either a thin pale 'crust' or just have the alveoles exposed? I think I've had that before and the tiger skin effect tends to be a bit chewier than the interior sponge. Could it be a semi-thick sponge batter that is piped into a filigree design then baked at a high temperature? The design wouldn't completely disappear but would settle down enough to fill the gaps left by the piping.
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Sorry, my bad. There's the standard ganaches with a comparatively larger amount of cream (and corresponding water content) in the recipe. And then there's the ganaches (like those outlined in the Greweling book) that have a higher ratio of butter in the recipe. The standard ganaches have approximate guidelines that should be followed for a good result, such as:
35% total fat mass
18-25% cocoa butter mass
10-17% other fat mass
+/- 20% water
But there doesn't seem to be any published equivalent on butter ganaches. My friend has my Greweling book so I can't go into any more depth but maybe someone else can chip in?
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And while on the topic, if you could find out the equivalent guidelines for a butter ganache: that would be awesome
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The Callebaut demos at Europain this year suggest bringing the butter to the boil with the cream. By bringing it to the boil, you lower the chance of the butter adding any bacterial contaminants. In regards to the maintaining/breaking of butter's natural emulsion: it's felt that the whole process of emulsifying the ganache will also emulsify the separated butter components. It'd be simple, yet interesting to do a side-by-side comparison.
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Try Christophe Michalak's blog, it's in French but there'll be someone here who can translate for you I'm sure. The pictures are awesome anyway:
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The fading of the green is natural, you can slow it down by the usual measures: keeping it cool, away from light and avoiding excessive exposure/incorporation of air. Adding cornstarch/icing sugar can be used to counteract the oil coming out but it won't really be the same. A higher sugar content in the recipe will make the problem easier to avoid to begin with but makes it less enjoyable to eat: a 50-55% pistachios to 45-50% sugars is probably a good ratio. Dextrose powder and trimoline can be used in place of some of the sucrose to prevent drying and crystallising of the sugars. You can also consider adding a bit of tempered cocoa butter to the marzipan to firm it up to make for a nicer cut/degustation.
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The only way to reduce the graininess is to continue to process it. Generally you need a process with a high rpm, if not a broyeuse. For a rough idea on the speed required, I've not had success on robotcoupe's with a maximum rpm of 1500 but find that the 3000 rpm robotcoupe's do a very good job. There's still a slight graininess but I find it preferable as it seems more rustic.
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Wouldn't it be cool to use, in place of the banana puree, a caramelised banana flambe puree? Maybe something like, caramelise some sugar, deglaze with butter, add diced banana and sautee, flambee with some rum, process to a puree while still hot, add the gelatin, let cool then add whipped cream.
I guess it would go something like:
100g sugar
50g butter
500g diced banana
80-100g rum
Vanilla (optional)
12g gelatin (150 bloom) soaked in 60g water
500g whipped cream
So the method goes:
Caramelise the sugar to a deep caramel.
Add the butter and then diced bananas. Cook over medium heat 4-5 minutes.
Add rum and flambe.
Let cool slightly then puree. Reweigh 500g then add the gelatin.
Allow gelatinised banana puree (doesn't that sound appetising
) to cool to the point it thickens slightly then incorporate the whipped cream.The recipe is a slightly heavy on gelatin to allow room for error in case that the whipped cream is deflated excessively while incorporating or that the bananas haven't been sauteed enough to evapourate enough of the water. If those requirements are met, the gelatin content could be dropped to 10g for a more tender mousse.
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Obtain/maintain the emulsion: if water droplets, you have areas of high active water in the ganache.
Beware of humid environments, repeated exposure to humid environments can cause moisture to accumulate between the shell and the ganache, creating a high active water zone.
Boil your sugars with your cream.
Sterilise your equipment before use.
Use a sous vide (if using, make sure to sterilise the suction tube too).
Increase the sugar content of your ganache (which decreases Aw).
Minimise dairy fat content (dairy fats go rancid reasonably quickly) or use clarified butter (texture will change though).
Minimise changes of introduct of foreign matter (eg dust while waiting for fillings to set before placing cap on).
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It shouldn't really be necessary for you to get a refractometer or hydrometer. Normally you can reach the right density by bringing X quantity of sugar to the boil with Y quantity of water. I don't have a table of conversions with me so I can't give you the ratio for the density that you want but I'm sure someone can chime in with that. Off the top of my head I think such a table existed in Bo Friberg's 'Professional Pastrychef'.
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Try adding good quality instant coffee. There's a very small amount of moisture in gianduja though (next to nothing) so it may be worth grinding as finely as possible so that it's more mixed in. Alternatively, a coffee extract that isn't water-based?
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Hi everyone,
The Lenotre group, mostly known for their awesome patisserie, have reached Australia. If I remember rightly, they're a part of the Accor group, which runs Sofitel, and was introduced at the start of last year in the Hotel Sofitel in Sydney. I'm not sure how long ago, but they're also come to Melbourne now. I'd love to go sometime but am overseas but would love to hear what it's like. Has anyone been?
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Cream has a little less than 65% water, 35% dry mass (fat).
Passionfruit puree, non-reduced, has 84% water and 16% dry mass, and when reduced by half, has 72% water and 28% dry mass.
From the example Greweling recipe, you could take the 290g cream with 100g dry mass and 190g water and replace it with 250g of passionfruit reduction which has 180g water and 70g dry mass as well as 40g butter with 7.2g dry mass and 32.8g of dry mass (fat). The difference with the recipe now though is that you have a larger sugar content (fructose) and a lower fat mass but a similar %age water, which isn't the same thing as Aw level. If you wanted, you could try substituting clarified butter instead of normal butter to increase the fat level and lower the water level but then you'd have a thinner ganache as you can't get the creamy texture you get by adding unmelted warm butter to a caramel at 30-32C.
I'm trying to understand how to calculate theoretical Aw levels but it's still quite unclear.
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The glucose 'recipe' was one given to me while in school and I've really not bothered to think about it too much till now. I guess my take on it is that isomalt opacifies as a result of moisture while glucose doesn't. So adding glucose does increase the hygroscopicity of the piece, but also increases the overall tolerance to humidity (visually).
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Are you in a high humidity area iii? If so, try adding glucose to your isomalt. Bring 1kg of isomalt to 170C, add 100g of hot glucose, bring it back to 170C. Let cool, then pour. The glucose should add some moisture protection.
I'm sorry I don't understand what you mean about the sharp edge bubble isomalt.
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Isomalt, poured hot, onto silicon will cause those bubbles to appear. The idea is to pour it when it's as cold as possible but still manageable. You may still get bubbles but a quick pass over with a blow torch will cause those to disappear. Poured isomalt or sugar tends to take on the appearance of the contact surface too, so it may be worth getting something like this. I suppose it's just a heat resistance piece of vinyl but I'm not too sure. I do know though, that if you're going to do that, that you really want a piece of baking paper between the vinyl and the table/workspace... I learned that the hard way
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They speak French in Switzerland don't they (I can't remember
). If they do though, try looking for it under the name 'levure chimique'. Levure is yeast, so levure chimique translates to something like chemical yeast, aka baking powder. -
The shelf life indicated on Callebaut's website say 2 years after production date and 1 year after production date for Mycryo.
Molded and Filled Chocolates: Troubleshooting and Techniques
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Hi sorry I haven't replied in a while. About unfilled gaps when using the acetate, they do happen: more so if the space between the filling and the acetate is quite large as well as depending if the surface of the filling is concave of convex. One way of avoiding this is get some chocolate onto the back of the mould and work it back and forth with a spatula, then scrape off the excess. Let it nearly fully crystallise, and then do the acetate technique. The advantage of this is you'll find the surfaces are even flatter still, compared with the slip dip in the otherwise smooth surface if you do it all at once. It's also less likely to have the hairline crack between the moulded portion of the shell and the base.