teonzo

There's no need to make foot and "roof" for enrobed bonbons, if you use the proper technique for hand dipping then the fork always stays in contact with the foot and never touches the other sides . So it's just detrimental: more work for you, thicker shell for the customer. Your goal is to spread the foot as thin as possible, whatever method you use you'll end up with tempered chocolate due to the act of spreading it thin (I'm meaning the standard methods with brush, palette knife and similars). To keep it untempered you need to spread it thick, which is not what you want. In my opinion the best thing is brushing untempered chocolate on the acetate sheet, then pouring the ganache over it, then cut the slab keeping the foot at the bottom and not top. If for whatever reason you need to cut it upside down, then warm the foot with a heat gun / hair drier (withouth melting it, it just needs to change matte). If you spread the foot on top (which is a forced choice in some cases, like when you are making a pâte de fruits layer) then the surface will be a bit wavy and bumpy no matter how skilled your hands are, this means the final bonbons will be more irregular (some will tend to be oblique). If you spread the foot at the bottom then its surface will always be flat, leading to better final results. Sorry to be a term nazi, but "chablon" refers to a particular mold (flat and thin, with shaped cavities), not to a thin sheet of chocolate. Teo

I was forgetting the short explanation, I must accept I'm getting less young. The big culprit to your viscosity problem is the lack of lecithin. Lecithin works properly when the ratio lecithin / cocoa butter is within a precise window. If you start from a chocolate that has 6% cocoa butter then add enough cocoa butter to reach 30%, then you are adding only cocoa butter but not lecithin. The native lecithin ratio is for a 6% cocoa butter chocolate, you are transitioning to a cocoa butter content that's 5x, so you end with a lecithin content that's 1/5 of the optimal. This explanation is not precise, things are more complicated, it's just to give a clue. Teo

Viscosity does not depend only on the cocoa butter content, but on all the ingredients. If a producer uses much less cocoa butter (compared to good quality couverture) then he needs to change the ratio of the other ingredients. All ingredients affect in different way how cocoa butter behave. If you are using this white chocolate then it has only 6% fat, while good white couvertures are around 30%. The difference is pretty big. The solution to your problem is pretty simple: just buy couverture, then adjust on that. You will face over-crystallization problems no matter what, but things will be really different than what you are facing now. There are technical / scientific books aimed for the industries that explain these things, but they are really expensive ($100 or above) and are really technical (you need good notions about physics and chemistry, if you didn't attend university then those books are really hard to digest). Studying the hows and whys is always a good thing to do, so if you choose that road then you make a very fine choice. But for now it's just overkill since the only thing you need to do is buying the correct produce. Teo

Personally I would suggest you to avoid baking chocolate and use couverture. It has not much sense to go through the hassle of hand tempering and so on, then cutting costs on the chocolate. At the end of the day (considering all the time you loose for the troubles you are having) you are not saving money. Teo

Those stitches worked magic to decompress his vertebral column. Teo

Good to know, thanks, my apologies for my mistake. I don't remember seeing that feature here, but I must say those machines were far from common, people prefer to use moka or Neapolitan coffee makers at home. @ElsieD I'm really glad your neighbour found all the missing parts. Nice to see it had an instructional VHS, hope you still have a player. If it hasn't been used for long time, then I suggest to run it for few cycles and discard the coffee before starting drinking it. Teo

That should be where you fill the water tank: you open the knob turning it counter clockwise, then pour water inside the tank. The cloud is the signal "beware of vapor": if you open the knob few time after using the coffee machine, then the water in the tank will be hot and vapor will come out of the hole, so you risk serious burns. Same risks you face if you use the appliance with a water tank to iron your clothes (don't know the name in English). Another possibility is that you can adjust the vapor pressure that comes out of the hose, from what I remember it was not a feature in those old machines (but I could be mistaken as well), they should have only the "on/off" features. Teo

We know you already did, and that it was the correct choice. Teo

I tried some searches in Italian with no luck, I did not find anything looking like that. Gran Gaggia is a series of coffee machines for home use, models change with the years (different design and so on). Your model seems to be quite old, I would say 20+ years judging from the buttons on the right (that kind was common on most home appliances decades ago). Finding a pdf manual seems unlikely, if I'm right this model comes from before the internet age. Finding the original paper version seems even more unlikely, I doubt someone would ever try to sell it on ebay without the actual machine. Judging from the photo you are missing the most important accessory, the filter holder, without that it's impossible to brew coffee. Without that, you can only use the vapor hose (beware of burns) for frothing milk for cappuccino (but you would need coffee made from another source) or heating water for infusions (tea and so on). Try asking politely to your neighbor if there is any chance to retrieve the filter holder, most probably the ones that are sold nowadays won't fit your machine. The 3 buttons on the right are for (from right to left): - 0/1 button is for turning on the machine (heating water), the red light is on when the machine is on; - the cup button is for activating the pump to force hot water through the filter holder and brew the coffee, the green light is on when the pump is working (it takes some seconds for the first coffee to drop down, it keeps dropping for some seconds after you turn off the button); - the vapor button is for activating the vapor hose, no light here because you hear the noise of the vapor coming out from the hose (I repeat, be careful since vapor burns). The knob on the top is for filling the tank with water (open the know and pour the water). You should be able to open the top of the machine to remove the water filter and be able to clean and the machine tank. Teo

Here in Italy there two main methods for keeping levain / sourdough starters. One is the "water method" (the levain rests submerged, or partially submerged, in water), the other is the "tied method" (the levain gets put in a towel and tied). Here is a video: Maybe you could try using different strings / ropes to tie it and see which ones get broken (the levain exerts a sensible pressure and you need a strong rope) to get an idea of the rope strength you need and the pressure by the levain. Seeing the simple levain pulling a houdini can be really effective in impressing people. Teo

When I was a teenager (a couple years ago) this song: was a big hit here in Italy. I suppose it's totally unknown out of our frontiers and you preferred remaining ignorant. Let's say the singer was admired more for her big eyes than for her voice. Maybe I should rewrite that song's lyrics for this thread. Weird Teo Italianovic

You lost some points here. Teo

Besides what Rob wrote, there are other things to consider. It's pretty typical for all people with hard jobs and low pays (like the ones named in this thread, but there are others like cooks, waiters and so on) to end up talking about food. After a stressful day you need to go out and have a bit of a party, just to vent out and dissolve a bit of adrenaline. If your salary is low, then you can't afford much, so you end up in bars and similars, both for the cost and for the atmosphere. When your life consist of family + work + bar, then you tend to talk about the bar side to keep your spirits up. Add to this that most people are not masochist (meaning they try to go to places they love, not just anywhere), then it's easy for the discussions to vert on what you are eating and drinking. People who can afford to go to opera, the Caribbeans and so on will tend to talk about that, people who can't afford those things have a much more limited spectrum. Teo

Can you tell us something more about the rest of the team please? They deserve some recognition too! Teo

Until yesterday I never heard about these sugar eggs, then I read your post and after few hours I found about this book which came out yesterday (without looking for it, so quite a coincidence): How To Create Your Own Panoramic Sugar Easter Eggs: The Ultimate Guide to Sweetness Maybe you are interested, it says it costs $0 if you have Kindle Unlimited. Thanks for pointing out the existence of these eggs! Teo

Unfortunately I have one here and I hate it more than you do. Nothing constructive to add, I just wanted to vent out. Teo

A good reason to add an EZ Temper to the order and save on shipping costs. Teo

This is something really nice to see. I always wondered why chocolatiers in the USA felt the need to import Selmi and FBM. You should save a lot of money only on import fees. Teo

If you have problems with static then you just need to put the mold in contact with a metal radiator. If you don't have a metal radiator in the kitchen (don't know what heating systems you use in the USA, sorry) then just put the mold in contact with anything that has a "grounding line" (don't know the technical term in English, sorry) to remove the static electricity. If you google "how to remove static" you'll find much better explanations than the ones I can try to write translating from Italian. Teo

I've had it for 24 hours. I like it so far. Hahahaha, I bet your "toys I wish - list" is much shorter than your actual "toys I already have - list". That's the way to live, full throttle, kudos! Teo

This is one of the best chef compliments I ever read! You must be proud! If I were in your shoes I would print it and hang it in the kitchen area, so when I'm cooking I get additional drive and motivation. Teo

I love (not in the bunny way) the "pineapple" egg on the bottom right, compliments! Teo

Ouch, sorry. With some luck and patience it will get discounted again. Teo

This is one of the best food books I ever read, highly suggested. It's also a great ode to a friend, big humanity in her writing. If you like top restaurant cookbooks, then this is more than a must at that price. Those dishes are almost impossible to make at home, so it's not a cookbook with direct use for the home cook. If you are interested in reading the thought process and the personal feelings behind world class dishes, then this is one of the best books out there. Teo

Have you tried looking for some local producers? With all the food craze of the last 20 years, there must be some US artisans for sure. I don't know them, sorry. If you are talking about this one, then I can only say I would not be inclined in buying anything. The "biggest" Italian producer is Capovilla. I mean big as with the widest distribution (in specialty stores, the ones I call "food jewelries", not in supermarkets) and with the best ratings. Maybe some bottles are imported in the USA too, but you'll need to invest a kidney. Another road worth trying is Chinese stores. You can find some really good stuff there and prices are good. But if I were in your shoes then I'd try searching for small US artisans that work with foraged wild fruits. I just tried googling for loganberry liqueur and the first page gave Whidbey Distillery, can't comment on quality without tasting, but I hope those prizes are deserved. I googled one of their prizes, the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and got this results page, with this entry: Best Eu-de-Vie Impression Grape Spirits 42°, Yunnan, China ALCOHOL: 42% RETAIL PRICE: $34 $34 seems a great price, if you can find it. If you search for other competitions I'm pretty sure you can find the contacts of a good number of producers who are worth trying. Teo