This was the first chocolate class I have taken and I had no idea what to expect. I arrived in Chicago a day early and walked down to the French Pastry School an hour early to deal with any paperwork, but I was told to return just fifteen minutes before class so I headed back to the hotel to grab some lunch. When I arrived back I found there were six of us from outside the school and the rest of the seventeen were current students of the school. We were handed a 25 page class book and signed in. It was a good thing that I ate a large meal because we didn’t get a single break in the whole seven hours! I was warned by jcho that a break may not be forthcoming so I brought a box of crackers and a bottle of water. I was so busy the first day that I didn’t stop to eat, but I made a point of snacking a little throughout the class the next two days so I wouldn’t drop. The six of us were taken upstairs to a learning kitchen where I quickly spotted Chef Jean-Pierre Wybauw from Kerry’s pictures. From there the whole class headed up one more floor to a classroom where we introduced ourselves and he gave an hour and a half lecture on tempering. I had read most of what he had to say before, either here or in his book, but it all clicked and fell into place for me then. All the unstable crystals melt before the stable Beta ones do, and that was the basis of every tempering method. They may start from different places, but they basically generate either just good crystals (in the case of seeding straight from fresh chocolate), or a mix of crystal types and then melt out all but the good ones by raising the temperature into the proper range. A properly tempered batch of chocolate has a certain amount of good crystals which act as a seed when it cools. However these crystals don’t just sit there in the bowl. They generate more crystals which is why as time goes on the chocolate gets thicker. There are two ways to deal with that, the first being adding more untempered chocolate to bring the ratio back in line, and the other to hit it with a heat gun to melt out some of the over crystallization. He kept pointing out that the temperature of the chocolate may be in the correct range, but it won’t necessarily have the proper crystal seed. He also said that you have to stir the chocolate to keep it evenly heated (he was using the Mol D’art melters) as chocolate is a good insulator and the chocolate next to the heating element will be warmer than that on top. There is already a detailed discussion on the melters in another active thread so I’ll leave it at that. What I hadn’t paid much attention to before was proper cooling. Too fast and the temperature dips down into the range where the unstable crystals form and compete with the good crystals for the cocoa butter. Too slow and the crystals form coarsely for a poor result as well. I’m not clear on the mechanism for that however. If anyone can enlighten me on the subject feel free to speak up. He has a suggestion of a working room temperature of 68F and a cooling room/fridge of 50F for the artisan who can’t afford the three temperature ranges that are used commercially. Once it starts setting at the working room temperature you move it to the cooler. Setting chocolate is exothermic so you have to watch placing too much chocolate in close proximity or it could cause some of it to go out of temper before it cools enough to fully set. He later made a point that when dipping you don’t want to place the pieces too close together, especially if they are tall, otherwise the sides could end up out of temper due to cooling too slowly. I have abused my cooling in the past by just popping it into the fridge too early, or even a shot in the freezer if they weren’t releasing easily. I’m going to be much more careful and it will probably do wonders. Then it was back down to the teaching kitchen to watch him temper the three 12kg melters of dark, milk, and white chocolate. That was a simple matter of tossing in callets and stirring until they stopped melting easily. Then a bit of heavier stirring took care of the rest and it was done. Having only used an automatic tempering machine before (a Rev2), I was surprised at the ease. A couple of my classmates who had the melters confirmed that it was pretty easy to temper and keep it in temper, so I am now sold on the idea. The class kitchen, eight tables with two students to a table. JPW then demonstrated the first ganache which I believe was a Jasmine tea. It’s difficult to recall the order of the recipes as we made a total of ten over the three days. He stressed that he didn’t want to make it a class about ganache anyway, but rather on techniques. Over the course of the class he made the ganaches in different ways. With the Jasmine he steeped the tea in water first before adding it to the cream in order to extract maximum flavor, and another time he steeped directly in the cream. He added the invert sugar after the cream had cooled so that the water binding aspect of the sugar not be destroyed. Some times he added the glucose to the hot cream, and other times later. He always added the butter last and at room temperature. Once he chucked everything together at once in a Robo-Coupe food processor, but the recipe wasn’t the best one to demo that way. It was thick enough that the machine kept tripping its breaker, and eventually the ganache separated. That was fortunate though, as it gave him an opportunity to demonstrate rescuing a split batch. He started by taking a small amount of the ganache and whipping in cold cream. That helped but didn’t do the trick completely. So the backup plan was to refrigerate it until the outer edges started to set, then scrape it and mix it in. That brought the small bit together, and he started adding a bit of the still separated batch a little at a time, being careful to not overwork it and heat it up enough to separate again. It took a little time, but he completed the rescue. I’ve had to toss out a couple batches in the past due to this problem so it was very valuable to me. He also hand whisked and used an immersion blender to demonstrate other methods. He said that he will have another book in the future all about ganaches and I will be one of the first in line to purchase it. Later in the day he brought out his new book on Chocolate Decorations and I was indeed first in line. I pulled out cash and was ribbed by my classmates for my eagerness. JPW asked me why I was so fast to buy it sight unseen and I told him that I already had a good idea what was in it based on reports here at eGullet. That reminded him of Kerry’s mention of the site and he said that he tried but failed to find us here. I knew the huge site could be confusing so I wrote out full instructions on how to get to this part of the forum. He sounded interested enough that we might just get a visit. Chef stated his preference for tempered chocolate in the ganache, claiming that it results in a smoother ganache. Most of the time he started with tempered chocolate from the melter and added the cream only after it cooled enough not to take it out of temper. However once he poured hot cream on solid chocolate and waited for it to cool into the range before adding butter. I thought it was a bit odd that butter crystals could temper chocolate and being a skeptical person I’m not convinced that works. I will try the pre-tempered chocolate though to see if I can determine a difference in texture. He then gave a demonstration of creating shells in a mold. I’ve done that many times so I figured there wasn’t anything new to me, but he did go on to state that rounded cavities can be poured thinner than those with square sides as the latter needs to contract more to release. Then he added the tip to let the mold set cavities down on parchment in order to ensure the top of the cavity doesn’t thin out too much. He also had us set it on the long edge if you are creating empty cups to fill later. I flipped mine to the other side after a bit, but I don’t know if it was really required. We made a couple more batches of ganache which were cut later with an oval cutter or the guitar cutter. For most of the recipes there was one set of ingredients per four students so you had to share the duties. A couple recipes were so large that chef just made a couple batches himself. He showed us several different ways to pour out an even slab of ganache, involving a pastry frame, a half sheet pan with a metal bar to subdivide it, a set of caramel bars, and rolling out between a pair of bars in a sandwich of guitar sheets. These half sheet size flat aluminum sheets were SO useful! I’m going to have to find a source for these things. Especially useful for re-rolling leftover ganache when using a punch cutter This is our Mocha ganache Coating it with a layer of chocolate Using an extra tall oval cutter to punch three pieces before emptying. One center is left inside the cutter while the other two fall out easily due to the flaring sides. Remember to cut with the chocolate side down so it doesn’t shatter. Cutting a slab with the guitar cutter. Note the care to produce the least waste. The slab goes at the back of the table for ease of cutting. Chef demonstrated the correct usage of the guitar cutter, including what to do when it gets stuck half way through a slab. After using it I now have a better idea how to build my own. Dipping: JPW dips using the surface of the chocolate to pull the excess away rather than pounding the fork against the side of the bowl. This keeps the fork from being driven into soft centers. He also had a nifty way to dip by placing the center in upside down and using the fork on an end to flip it over and pull it out. He made it look so easy as he tossed a new center in the bowl with one hand while depositing the dipped center on the paper with the other. Detailed instructions for dipping can be found on Callebaut’s website under the Applications>Covering with chocolate / Coating>Dipping chocolates/petits fours/biscuits section. It reads just as he taught us. Using a truffle grid to achieve the characteristic points. Coat the truffles once, then a second time and roll on the grid just as they start to set. He called these Chestnuts due to the look, but they are marzipan, candied orange, orange liquor and orange compound. Another trick I hadn’t used before was to use rubber stencils to quickly form bases for a soft piped ganache. I am on the lookout for a set of round and oval stencils. So far the only source I located on the web is in the UK. That is a VERY neat idea. The bottoms stick to the parchment just enough that they don’t shift around as you pipe. That’s a Kahlua ganache below. The ganache on the table is from a series of "How not to pipe". None of mine looked as good as his. Chef demonstrated caramel making and spoke of the different methods, all covered very well in a demo and other threads in this forum so I won’t elaborate here. Something I hadn’t thought of was the trick of adding water to tempered chocolate to thicken it up for piping decorations. I was warned so hard against moisture that I thought a drop of water would instantly cause the chocolate to seize up rock hard. Turns out that the case was overstated a bit and one can sprinkle a bit of water into a piping bag amount of chocolate to get it to a perfect piping viscosity. We were also instructed on how to properly form a small paper piping cone and form two different decorations, a form of stylized tree and a line of hearts. That one truffle dragged across the paper was done on purpose to show us how not to remove the fork. One of the most useful bits of information for me was an explanation of the Callebaut coding system. The basic formulation is a three digit number, with no specific sequence. The dark chocolate in order of bitterness is 805, 811, 835, 815, and 845. If there is a letter prefix, it denotes a percentage less cocoa butter: A811 is 1% less, B811, 2% less, C811 3% less, and so on. If there is a number, that denotes a percentage more: 1811 is 1% over the standard formulation, etc. Suffixes denote the type of chocolate such as Milk or White. Additionally there is a number of little drops on the package, ranging from one to five drops. The more drops the more fluid the chocolate. JPW stated a preference for the standard formula, though I think we ended up with the “C” formulation on the last day. I ordered from gourmail.com and they had only one formulation of each of the basic types. I had always thought that the chocolate I have been using was a bit thick, so I checked it out: Callebaut Semi-Sweet Chocolate (Belgium) D835 49% Callebaut Bittersweet Chocolate (Belgium) L60-40 60% Wow. The Semi-Sweet was 4% less and the Bittersweet was a full 12% less! No wonder I was having a hard time getting thin shells with it. The Semi-Sweet has just two drops on the label and the Bittersweet only one. On one website the legend states that one drop means it is good for solid molding and not much else. I will be locating a supply of the standard formulation soon. I was very pleased with the thin shells I was able to get with it in class and want to duplicate that at home. Chef gave a short lecture on using sugar syrup for liquor centered chocolates, but given time constraints he had the school staff create a batch in favor of the students. He poured this the end of the second day and left it to crust overnight. Unfortunately the shells he poured it in were out of temper so he didn’t finish them off. I had tried it on my own at home the week prior in anticipation of many questions. One that I had based on the instructions in his book was just what the degree symbol meant in regards to the description of the alcohol. Kerry Beal assured me that it was degrees proof in another thread, and she was right. Well, mostly right. It turns out to be degrees proof European, which is different from the US system. There are at least four different measuring systems so it was good to get that cleared up. I showed him the formulation from another book which varied the amount of sugar based on the proof of the alcohol, and he wasn’t sure why it varied. He stated that sugar doesn’t dissolve in alcohol so it shouldn’t matter, and the amount he called for was to balance the sweetness in the flavor rather than to affect the forming of the sugar shell. I had brought in a few bon-bons from my second home trial for inspection. The bottoms were a bit messy and the shells were too thick, but he approved of the sugar shell thickness and the overall taste which pleased me. I had used a vanilla liquor and enrobed it in milk chocolate. I came out with a better appreciation for how gentle one should be with the syrup after it cools in order to not generate crystals which would cause lumps to form inside the center. He gave a demonstration of using contrasting chocolate colors in molds and using colored cocoa butter wiped in the mold for color. We have an excellent demo of that in the demo thread and a pretty in depth discussion on the “Chocolates with a showroom finish” thread. He used a paintbrush here. Working the chocolate in with the brush creates crystals (by movement as you jam the bristles in) so you have to watch how much you go over each cavity or you risk loosing the shine from a good temper. Painting the chocolate in The painted trays Cleaning the tops A very neat trick for production work is what I call “slam filling”. Rather than painstakingly fill each mold cavity to the correct depth with a piping bag, he used a spatula to drop a mound of ganache on the tray, filled the whole thing at once and scraped it off. Of course you are thinking that you can’t create a bottom now, and you would be right if that was the last step. Chef held the tray at an angle to the table and slammed it down, causing the fillings to shift slightly and ooze a bit out of each cavity. He then took the spatula and quickly swiped that overflow off, tapped the tray flat on the table, and each cavity was perfectly filled. The whole process saved a great deal of effort and would really save time if you were processing a dozen or more trays. I’m sure it would take a bit of practice to achieve just the right touch, but it would be well rewarded. Filling every cavity at once. I wasn’t fast enough on the shutter to catch the “slam” Chef then went on to demonstrate creating 3D chocolates from two identical flat molds. He used a pair of seashell molds and the result was very nice. Candying was discussed as an alternative to coating with chocolate and he showed us his pan with double screens to suspend the centers in the syrup. We didn’t take it any further than the discussion phase though. After three days of chocolate making the class had quite a few trays of truffles that hadn’t been dipped. This called for a mass enrobing using the machine. We sent hundreds of centers through this thing over the course of an hour. I’ll never have an excuse to spend $30K for one of these, but it was fun to play with once. The enrobing machine Warming up the chocolate Chef took the last few minutes of the class to show us how to pack a box for the customer. The first layer – all the same height and neatly filling the bottom Finished results. The flavors are terrific! To sum up, I either performed or watched a fair number of techniques that I haven’t gotten around to yet, and absorbed many new ideas and information that I wouldn’t have gotten in another year or two at my own pace. This was just the right time in my learning to take the class as I had enough experience to be able to absorb all the information, and not so much that I was already familiar with the majority of it. I heartily recommend it! The obligatory shot. Note the nifty jacket my wife gave me for our anniversary! One postscript: I stayed at the Best Western River North which has a deal with the FPS, but it turned out to be a fairly noisy hotel. I could hear everything going on in the street and quite a bit in the room next door which made sleeping in problematic. If you opt to stay there get to bed early to ensure a good night sleep.
