Avachocolate

I have a small room especially for chocolate work (about 12x15 feet) with a decent airconditioning unit...the dehumidifier is about the size of a small college dorm size fridge (not sure about the electricity / watt rating) and it really does not put out too much heat. I do have to take out about a gallon of water from it each day. Without the dehumidifier the AC unit will lower the humidity slightly on its own but not nearly enough to be useful...a dehumidifier is a must for me, cannot work with my chocolates above 50 % ( your workflow may vary of course)

Well, I have never met anybody else that mentioned that number as a good temperature...and I have talked to many people whose chocolate expertise I consider much greater than mine and they all said 20-22...and that range also works great for me. When I go below 20 degrees things tend to go a bit funny sometimes... Of course if my workflow consisted of making pretty shells to post on instagram and then sell "masterclasses" then maybe I would try 18 C also ....just saying 😉

Your humidity is definitely too high...I find that if I go over 50 % then things get wonky real quick....I live in the tropics and need to have a dehumidifier running in my chocolate room at all time...I keep it at between 35-40 %. Also your temperature is a bit low....generally you want your room right at 21-22 degrees celsius...about 70-72 F. With 62 F your chocolate will also set really quick and be quite a pain to work with.

I switched from seeding to mycryo and could not be happier...super fast and convenient, use it for making molded pralines, chocolate decorations and even setting ganache all the time. Never had an issue with it not disolving as some of the other posters mentioned, just blend it in with a handwhisk. The EZtemper is a great tool also, unfortunately very hard to bring to the country I work in (vietnam)...mycryo is a good alternative for me.

Generally speaking Callebaut chocolate is nothing special....their Cacao Barry brand is awesome though....definitely worth the extra bit of money 😊

+1 for Zephyr W2 from Callebaut I would definitely not recommend also ..

The Alto el Sol chocolate is one of my favorites for taste from the Cacao Barry line...if you are looking for something a bit more fluid I would recommend the Haiti (for using with molds, I get nice results with it). As far as storage goes you would be better off to store it in a fridge...maybe if you have one with a dedicated vegetable drawer that is not super cold....just make sure your chocolate bag is sealed airtight as it will pick up flavor from other strong ingredients nearby. A refridgerater is certainly not the best storage solution but it is much better than leaving it in the florida heat & humidity. Best way to store chocolate for a homebaker or small shop would be a dedicated wine fridge at about 16 -18 degrees celsius...something you might want to look into if you want to play with chocolate more seriously. ....I think a small one is maybe a couple hundred dollars. As far as the tempering goes ....@keychris above explained it well...there are many different roads to take, as long as you do them well and practice they will all get you to the same result with varying degrees of time/equipment involved...you just need to figure out what works best for you.

You can also try Pavoni Liposoluble powders.....they are not bad.......homechocolatefactory.com in the UK sells them in various colors ( not too much variety though)

Philippe Conticini, Yann Couvreur, Yann Menguy, Des gateaux et du pain, Cedric Grolet, Sadaharu Aoki, Stohrer, Cyril Lignac, Cafe Pouchkine, Christophe Michalak, Christophe Adam.....all in Paris, just the first ones that come to mind, there are many more of course

Great book...I highly recommend it if you are interested in advanced patisserie....but probably not for the normal home baker

All of the above techniques help.... Making 40-50 shells and then picking the perfect 2-3 ones on Instagram also helps.....

90 % of the fancy bonbon designs you see on instagram are just for publicity and advertising classes/ schools.... they have nothing to do with making money...

I think that applies to about 80 % of praline decorations (and molds...) that I see on Instagram....

Not sure what you are making....but I own a Patisserie / Chocolate shop and I use chocolate powder only on some very rare occasions...mostly only for decorating and 1-2 basic recipes. For 99.9 percent of my work I use couverture chocolate.....and Hershey's is not something I would ever consider using, even in cocoa powder....too many other options out there, but of course that depends on the availability in your market. As @pastrygirl mentioned try to get some Callebaut....it is a good midrange brand and seems to be the most available in a large part of the world...or maybe Belcolade for something a bit cheaper and still decent.

It is just a chocolate bonbon....dont overthink it....

Well, I just know that whenever I reach for any Valrhona product that it will cost me an arm and a leg...lol. But some of their chocolates are worth it for me...

+1 for Valrhona Opalys for my favorite white...although have not tried Cluizel's white yet...

@Bentley......great point and well explained !

I would consider Belcolade a budget-midrange chocolate (no matter the Stephane Leroux marketing...)...their taste is not bad, but in their price range and market segment I would be highly surprised if they dont use soy lecithin in all of them. I know for a fact that some of their chocolates have soy lecithin listed as an ingredient, but not sure about their whole range. They seem to be mostly sold in asia and some parts of europe. It is a decent chocolate but in my opinion it does not compare well to Cacao Barry, Valrhona or Cluizel..but it is also considerably cheaper (around 8-9 euros/kg for most of their lineup). I have never had anybody ask me about soy lecithin in my chocolates...at all....your market may vary of course.

Yes, the "foot"on the bottom of the chocolate will tell you a lot about the state of your tempered chocolate ... I know it is contrary to popular wisdom but for my numbers the molded pieces are more efficient... I have my workflow dialed in just about perfect for both hand dipped and molded chocolates...and once you are at that point then (at least for me) working with molds is faster and a lot easier on my wrists than hand dipping. It is probably worth mentioning that 95 % of my chocolates are done in a single style mold (30 mm halfsphere) and I mostly stay away from full coverage airbrushing....meaning I only use my airbrush as an airsupply to push melted cocoabutter around the mold for decorative effects. The molds are easy to polish, no recessed corners....and I also dont need to clean my airbrush. Both those things save a lot of time and make working with molds more efficient for my workflow....your mileage may vary. All those fancy beautiful designed bonbons are done in classes or to impress on instagram (and I have certainly done my share of that...)...but for an actual person to make money from them they are completely impractical....even Melissa Coppel told me as much.

I dont have any scientific evidence or explanation for all that....just something I have observed after hand dipping a large amount of chocolates and this is the reasoning I came up with...but I know for a fact that the chocolate temperature at the side of my melter and in the middle of it can vary quite a bit...so in my mind that should affect the temper. A Mol d'art (or something similar) is a useful piece of equipment for a small chocolate shop (and I have used one for a long time and was happy with it) but technically speaking it is a rather simple and not very precise machine... And I also got some streaky chocolate pieces, maybe about 3 or 4 per 100...I just put those aside for friends and family and did not worry about it too much...

Even if you test the temper before it does not mean that it will all stay in temper evenly during the dipping time. The Mol 'Art has a rather large exposed surface area (unless you use one of the smallest ones) and in my experience some areas can get slightly out of temper before others...and if you touch that chocolate with your dipped piece that may be responsible for streaks. Thats why you may get 6-8 perfect pieces and all of a sudden one streaky one....then back to perfect again. Just for reference, in the first few years of my shop I hand dipped about 1000 -2000 pieces month.....then I finally switched completely to polycarbonate molds as it is much easier on my wrist...

Maybe "IBC Power Flowers" would fit that description ? Many different colors with supplied mixing charts...quite expensive from what I remember...but may be worth checking out if you want some exact coloring formulas...

I just bought some new Cacao Barry molds (the half round snack bars)....now they are a clear plastic, the ones I used before were solid white...a friend of mine works for Cacao Barry and he said they had some manufacturing problems with the solid white material so they had to switch to the new material...

+1 for marble...awesome for tempering and general chocolate work....make sure you get it at least 2.5-3 cm thick (1 inch or more)....thicker than that would be even better to keep the temperature down but then it gets real heavy, real fast