gfron1

So many possibilities but I would hone in on the fact that you let it sit around a couple of days. You certainly can do that but if you room temperature is fluctuating during that time you're asking for trouble. Of course the either the cocoa butter or the white could have just not been in temper to begin with. I would start again and try to control the variables one at a time.

Ha! Ooops...yes, in my world that detail was assumed and I forgot to mention. I've designed a service flow that requires no FOH (I put my bar in the BOH category).

BTW, I just found this MIT calculator that shows what a living wage is in each municipality. In St Louis its $11.06 for a single adult.

Obviously I'm not the first to attempt to deal with this matter, but at my current and soon-to-open restaurant we are going to be tip-included. So here is some of my thought process, much of which has come from previous threads here at EG. First, the wage disparity between front and back of house is unacceptable to me. Kitchen staff work much longer hours than FOH and traditionally are at a set wage with no tips. Maybe you're thrown a case of beer at the end of the shift, but unless you're at a more prosperous, professional restaurant, you're not getting a cut of the tips or annual bonuses. I know there are plenty of exceptions to this but I'm speaking in general. Second, BOH turnover and fatigue is high, and finding replacements is getting even more difficult, and factor in challenges to immigration law that are stifling flow of workers, so strategies to reward and maintain BOH is crucial. My approach is to cut them into the sales...not necessarily a profit sharing, but through the tip-included. Third, any restaurant that is considering such things should be at a level that there can be the professionalism to ensure that the service warrants the tips. No one should ever walk away feeling like they didn't get 20% worth of service. (I've never understood tips at carryout counters.) Lastly, If a restaurant simply raised its prices and said that they don't accept tips, that would be too confusing or contradictory to many guests who would leave a tip anyway. I prefer to say "tip already included" and make the tip and service match. With that thought process, the way we're operating is: Base pay of $15 for all BOH (Dish/Kitchen Manager, Chef, Sous, Bev Mngr, Bar Asst). Each gets a percentage of the tips. We're able to project sales including our break even figure. So for the sake of example let's assume tip included totaling $100K for the year. Chef (me) who is the sole staff investor gets 30% ($30k), Sous and Bvg Mngr get 25% ($25k each) and the remaining positions get 10% ($10k). That would put the dish/kitchen mngr at a base pay of $25k plus tips of $10k for $35k which is $17.50 an hour for a 50-week schedule. Sous chef has a base of $30k, adding the tips and they're at $65k. For a midwest city that's fair. And a reminder that this is a conservative sales estimate. As sales increase, tips increase...and yes, staffing could increase which would result in a re-distribution of percentages. [don't put a calculator to these figures because there are additional factors that I left out for brevity such as hours/days in a work week, alternative compensation, etc.]

Kinda nothing by the time you've removed the tannins. I think of it more as a protein source, but I do toast them and get some earthiness back into the flavor. My favorite brewery (Scratch Brewing in Ava IL) ferments them in shell and uses them in an acorn beer.which is really delicious.

That's exactly what it is. I make a living off of serving that stuff Old CW: throw your acorns (shelled) in a sack in the river and wash the tannins for about a week. Less old CW: throw your acorns in a sack in the toilet tank and wash the tannins for a few days. New CW: Open hotel pan acorns covered in water in chamber sealer and wash the tannins for a few minutes.

Thanks Jim. I thought those might have been your questions. And to Rajala - the shine isn't my goal, the decorating techniques are, and I believe many require a more powerful compressor than what I have.

So, I am definitely signing up for this. Can someone translate his requirements for a compressor into Badger language? "Air compressor, oil free, with a 3 L (or more) receiver tank." I know my current Badger won't cut the cake for the designs he's doing.

I don't often get to post my fun work since I'm usually in production mode, but I really enjoyed this dessert I made for a foraged food dinner in Napa recently. Acorn daquoise, prickly pear sorbet, torched Italian meringue, black currant pate de fruit, fresh mango, candied prickly pear.

I don't think the price is too out of line factoring in the exchange rate. Artistic value is determined by what people are willing to pay, and again, I think Andrey is doing techniques that I'm not seeing anywhere else. Caveat - I am seeing some of the techniques among other Russian chefs, but they aren't teaching. Another option is simply wait a year and the techniques will be widely demonstrated by the people who are going to learn it.

I have never heard of the alcohol technique, although since it was part of the Ecole class it must be common. Whenever I use alcohol I anticipate its evaporation (ie why some use it in pie crusts) so that would be where I would hone in on an explanation, especially since you said you used more than expected.

Right, about the exchange rate. I may take one for the team because I really do find his work so unique from any chef I'm seeing in the US. We'll see how good of a sales month I have

It might help for you to post your ganache recipe. Generally cracking is because you didn't give your ganache enough time, either as Chocolat says, temp, or possibly shrinkage as it dries out. I mention the recipe because it is also possible that you used live culture yogurt or something else that could be causing activity.

I saw that too, but I also saw "Start anytime, available forever, with authors support"

Has anyone taken one of Andrey's classes. I know they've been mentioned in the How Do They Do That thread, but I can't remember if anyone has taken a course. I'm curious because he continues to do methods that are groundbreaking. Not cheap for an online course, but I'm interested in taking his praline course. I just watched his free tempering class and it was good, nothing special but good enough to allay my fears that the Russian to English translation or camerawork might make the class not worthwhile. Thnx.

No need to check. I would love it. And I've been here long enough now to have all the connections to make it work.

Well, no surprise here - it looks like we'll be signing a lease on our new restaurant in about two weeks. After two years of waiting, of course it happened right during the workshop...my gut had been telling me this would be the case. We're doing the final drawings for the finances all this week, so I'll know 100% within days if this is the case. Once again, have fun without me, and hopefully I'll see you in 2019...although I see most of you daily on Facebook and IG And again the reminder that if the group wants a midwest conference I would be happy to host, and have good friends at Bissingers, Rick Jordan and a few others smaller name chocolatiers in the city as well as the various cooking schools.

Yes, good stuff. And its worth keeping up with their social media because they do interesting special projects with limited batches.

I've not had the issue that you're talking about but I do open the canister at least once (normally first thing when I come in in the morning), give it a stir and its good to go when I need it a few hours later (I give it the second good stir at that point). I need to do the same to my melting chocolates anyway, so no pain. My cocoa butter is in all sorts of shapes and sizes when it comes out of the bag.

here comes my two cents because I'm perplexed by the wall paper glue comments. I've been serving these at my breakfast restaurant ever since we opened. When I was r&d'ing these I had two issues that I need to deal with. First, was the texture - not paste, but too course. Second, is a slightly metallic taste that was coming from the raw oats. I get my oats from a local farmer - organic, small farm, minimally processed. And I think that's the difference (possibly) between mine and the haters' comments above. I soak in water or whey (with brown sugar and maple...just enough to not make it sweet), overnight, then blitz with a stick blender to about 60% blended - I like the diversity of texture. These less processed oats than something like Quaker, are nothing even close to paste. My recommendation if anyone cares to try again is to buy some bulk ones from a natural food store. Then to deal with the metallic taste I toasted my oats before I soaked them. That helped but didn't completely solve the problem. I now try to deal with the remaining metallic taste with the other ingredients. To finish the oats, I then add a bit of yogurt (we make our own and drain it, and its thick and tart) - sometimes I'll add some powdered milk the night before but not as often since it shortens my shelf life. To serve I smear the bottom of the bowl with pecan praline, add the oats, dust half of the top with black cocoa crumb, the other half gets a heaping mound of crunchy granola, garnish with two encapsulated spheres of horchata and a spoonful of espresso jelly. I think its pretty good

I always love your work and if I lived nearby would be enjoying far too many of your creations.

On a related note, a while back I had an engineer friend build me a guitar - really great machine that to this day allows me to cut soft caramel and overcooked pate de fruit. We were hoping to sell, but both of our lives took different turns. In our prototype we talked about size - both of the cuts but also the frame itself. For cuts I told him that I only needed 1" squares (finished) and then had him pull back 2 mm to allow for my dip thickness. For the frame, I already had a one-piece plexiglass pastry frame that was custom made to fit into my half sheet pans. So I had him build it to accommodate a half sheet less 2" (the size of the two ends of the frame). The problem was that the frame was built like a half sheet - rectangle, not square. And I didn't catch the error until it was too late. That means when I rotate the slab to do the second cut I have to trim some off to be able to make the second cut. That's a pain. All of that is to say that the advice to think through all stages of your production is crucial so you don't waste any money or time.

I think its funny that the reviewers never ask me what I think is best. If they did I would almost always tell them the less flashy, less instagrammable, less quirky items. I've been devouring the yogurt lately. There's just something about the flavors and textures that we're making that really is satisfying to me.

Thanks and welcome to the forum @TechieTechie. HERE's the second critical review. St. Louis has a lot of food media, but only two critical reviewers. So we passed the test with both of them!

I agree. I think they're more for competitions and classes than actual production, although as was said previously, there are a few chefs doing high volume production using lots of minions.