keychris

use a more fluid ganache so it self levels

Sounds interesting

Yes, there's a midge or fly or something that can locally pollinate in Mexico - but they still get a better strike rate when they hand pollinate, apparently.

If you have a sourdough culture that's working, why would you want to add commercial yeast to that? The whole point (IMHO) is that you don't have that yeast in the culture! Can you tell me what you mean by that? A week is a long time to retard the dough, mine always go too far after three days retarding in the fridge.

Thanks Kerry! If I could rustle up that kind of cash I'd change that Soon!

is there a 240V option on the EZ temper?

$110 shipping to Australia Apart from that, looks amazing!

I was at a vanilla farm just last week in far north Queensland (Australia) and they said a few things: A disease has wiped out a lot of production in one of the main countries, I forget which, sorry! Weather conditions (in Australia at any rate) have not been conducive to a good crop ( no clear wet and dry season the last year) Indian markets are buying up large quantities of vanilla at the moment, with a view possibly to controlling the market in the future (expect higher prices)

Sorry, no! I buy the 2.5kg bag and vacuum seal it into smaller packages, around 500g each for long term storage.

I have no problem with the flavour for the felchlin chips, I use them for all my cb needs as they're so much cheaper than mycryo

If you have a bad taste, perhaps it's absorbed water & smells from the air. I don't know if cb can go rancid or not.

I've lost count of the number of times I've sliced into fingernails... If I didn't have them my fingers would be significantly shorter

I use what simply called "guitar sheets", you can also try rhodoid sheets.

you need to understand what actually is happening to the chocolate at those temperatures - the higher temperature doesn't matter because you're just melting out all the crystals to a liquid state. Then when you drop the temperature, you encourage the correct crystal to propagate (the ... IV? crystal I think). Once you have that crystal propagating in your liquid chocolate at the correct temperature, it's going to continue to be formed until you have a solid mass of chocolate, still at 32C, still in temper, but completely unuseable for enrobing or making molds. So you need to gently heat your chocolate every now and then to keep melting out the excess crystals without melting them all out, which is why you start the day at 32C but may end the day higher than that. Is a continuous tempering machine something like a Selmi? In those, you shouldn't need to increase the temperature throughout the day because the chocolate in the big tank is high temperature and untempered, then gets cooled and tempered as it runs from the tank to the spout.

This is the bread I mentioned above with a direct substitute of the white flour with spelt.

Hi, I've done a fair bit of spelt baking. I found I could usually just substitute spelt flour for white flour in a bread recipe and get a decent result. Usually the dough would need more kneading to get a good structure. My son's favourite was the marbled rye formula from Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice with a direct substitution spelt for white. You need proving no matter what the flour for flavour and for the yeast to actually spit out carbon dioxide which causes the rise - that's why your second option didn't rise. If you don't prove, you'll bake a brick unless you have some form of chemical leavening to create the gas in the dough. Proving times also depend a lot on the temperature of the dough and the temperature you're proving at. If you're approaching it from "sheer laziness" check out no-knead method. I personally don't particularly enjoy the bread it creates but it definitely is easy

Nougat may need heat on the bowl even if all your sugars were at the right temperature to get the correct moisture level for it to set up properly and not be soft and sticky. You'll need to test the nougat in cold water to check it's at a firm but slightly pliable consistency. Personal preference for me is heat gun, because that's what I already have for chocolate work, but I've seen it done with a blowtorch. Just remember to use a metal bowl

that is an excellent table

@a_pinch_of Looking at that instagram feed, I have two theories - the first is that there's just a heavy instagram filter being used. The second is perhaps the product is being frozen? There's what appears to be moisture on some of the chocolates in some of the pictures, freeze/thaw may adversely effect shine perhaps?

if no-one else does before next weekend, I'll give it a go

I envisage a solid flexible piece of plastic or silicon with the star pattern cut out of it, or even some sort of piping nozzle, you spray onto the pattern, you get diffusion at the edges of the spray depending how far the stencil is from the mold. You can see there's very little diffusion in the centre, with more out to the edges, so the stencil could be against the centre of the mold and is away from the edges. The diffusion could also simply be spraying from a slightly further distance away and not getting full coverage. IMHO you can't get that pattern with a stamp which you coat and place into the mold, but I've never done that so can't really say @Bentley, once you've sprayed the red, applying white with a finger once the red has set will create the highlights of red, then when you create the shell in dark you'll accent them against the darker red colours. If you add the white whilst the red is still setting you'll get a more smeared effect which is not what I'm seeing in that picture. I notice someone has posted a link on the instagram photo to this thread, we might get a direct answer

I would assume pretty much what has been stated above: star shaped pattern is sprayed with white into each cavity red sprayed white applied in a swirl with finger create the shell in dark.

that mould is particularly shallow, but it is a very pretty mold. I just wish they could have engineered it to have more than 16 cavities.

Someone just asked this exact same question in another forum I'm on and the answer they were given was too much moisture in the oven as they baked - perhaps try cracking the door open whilst they bake with a wooden spoon?