akonsu

I am, just like you, trying to figure this out. Yes, for me buying 10 kilos of coverture chocolate is unreasonable, I think, so for now I use baking chocolate from Kroger and try to learn how to temper it consistently. I know it is far from real chocolate, but I guess I still can use it to learn how to temper properly, can not I? I mean, this chocolate is sold tempered, so it is, at least in theory, possible to temper it, right? Any advice from the experts in this respect?

This might be because of the limitations of the technology (his video camera producing washed out images, or your monitor's calibration, etc). You are comparing what you see on your screen with a real thing. : )

Thank you very much, ptw1953. Do you mean that for you it was not easy to maintain the correct temperature using sous vide, so you were getting inconsistent results? This is good to know, thanks. I do not need to try it myself now : )

Hello everyone, I have been reading about EZTemper, but I am only a beginner, so it is not for me yet, but I have a question. My understanding is that EZTemper produces silk from cocoa butter, I assume it just cooks it for 12/24 hours at 92.5 F temperature, right? There is a way to do the same, it seems, using a sous vide heater, so they say (please see the link to a youtube video below). Is this the same approach? Only less expensive? thanks! konstantin

Thank you. The reason why I asked is because in this video (below) they suggest doing that, so I did not question whether this is a good idea or not. Now I am totally confused, as I do not know much about chocolate yet and I am trying to learn, and I am getting contradictory advices : )

Thanks! This is a great idea, I did not think of that. My oven heats to about the same temperature with the light on. I think it can just put the moulds there before using them. Also, this is perhaps a stupid question, but why do we need to heat the moulds? I mean we are not talking about moulds just taken from a fridge, they are usually kept at room temperatures, so why is this needed?

Hello, would some one please explain how to heat polycarbonate moulds before pouring chocolate? What is acceptable heat gun temperature for this so that the mold does not bend, etc? How close should I hold my heat gun/hair dryer to the mould? Is heat gun the only practical way to do it? Or are there better ways? Anything else to pay attention to while doing this? Thanks a lot! Konstantin

Hello, I have a few questions about baking soda/potash/etc in dough, that are, perhaps, trivial for these who has experience. I would appreciate any input. I am using a recipe for cookies that I found on the web, and it makes a dough that needs to sit for several days (or even weeks) before baking. So the recipe proposes to make the dough from all the ingredients except for potash (they use potash rather than baking soda or baking powder). Then, after the dough is ready, dissolve potash in a tablespoon of water (or rum), mix it with the dough, and bake. How to effectively mix a small amount of liquid in to a large piece of dough so that the liquid distributes uniformly? Do I cut the dough into small pieces, and mix them with the liquid? Or do I just pour the liquid over the whole piece of dough and knead the dough again? Does it make sense to not add potash right away into the flour in this case (when I need to let the dough rest for a while)? If I do add potash to flour when I prepare dough (instead of adding it later), will potash react with the acids in the dough right away, which will result in the dough losing the carbon dioxide during the resting stage, before it is actually baked? Or is it acceptable to add potash (or any other leavening agent) to flour when I need to let it rest for significant amount of time after that? Thanks for your help.

Hello everyone, I am still learning, so maybe this is a simple question... For eclairs we use pate a choux dough which we make by mixing flour with (almost) boiling water/butter mix. Some recipes for gingerbread cookies also use something similar: we heat honey and butter, and maybe water to almost boiling temperature and add half of the flour. Then once this dough cools down to room temperature we add the other half of the flour. My question is: are these different variations of the same technique, or the fact that we heat just half of the flour in the second case makes them different in principle? If I heat all flour for my gingerbread cookies, will this not work? Why do we need to add more flour to cooked dough? I am just trying to understand the process... thanks! konstantin

@Pete Fred thanks for posting. Would you please describe how you made the meringue hollow so that you could fill it with the cream? It was not hollow when you put it in to the oven, right? It would collapse, I think. But I am not sure, I am a newbie...

@anonymouse thanks, this is a very useful post for me, as I am also trying to learn this. When you say "palette knife", what do you mean? Are you referring to a palette knife that painters/artists use? These come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, which one did you use before you switched to a okonomiyaki spatula? Also, I suppose that you use okonomiyaki just because you already had it, so you did not need to get anything else, right? There is no need to search for okonomiyaki specifically, I can get a "regular" scraping spatula for chocolate, right?

Hello, thanks for posting this. Where can I read more about these stages that you are referring to? Maybe this will help me make better starters in the future... konstantin

Hello everyone, I made this yesterday. It is rye with about 25-30% of wheat. The recipe is based on the Russian Orlovsky bread. I used a starter that I grew myself, there is no factory yeast. I prefer it rise better than this, although, I am not sure if I can make it do that with my own starter. I used the dutch over technique that Chad Robertson describes in the "Tartine bread". He uses it for wheat bread, and this one is rye, but this seems to work. The recipe that I used calls for rye grown in Europe, and the flour that I found here is different. I used a bit more water, and dough fermentation and proofing times are longer. But I am new to baking and bread making, so maybe this is me, not the flour. konstantin

I tried doing this on a granite floor tile (a 18x18 inches square, about 5mm thick, you know, the standard tile from Home Depot) with the same problem. I suppose that such a small tile is not sufficient... But I get the idea, thanks. I did not get this... It is about 22-23 C (about 73 F). Is this too warm? @Kerry Beal, @pastrygirl, thanks for your responses!

I use inexpensive semi-sweet Ghirardelli baking chocolate from Walmart to cover my pastry concoctions. I temper it by just heating it in a bowl in a microwave or over a water bath, then I take 2/3 of it and stir for about 15 minutes until it cools, then I pour it into the remaining 1/3, that heats it up to the working temperature. The surface quality, after it sets, looks ok to me. I can touch it, it does not melt when touched, it breaks with some snap, tempering is not as good as that from a factory but it looks acceptable to me at this point (I am still learning). The only problem is that after a few hours it gets streaks of fat in it, a cocoa butter bloom, it looks like. And I do not know why this is happening and how to prevent it. Please help. Thanks!

Thanks, everyone!

@keychris, thanks. Do you mean that the person you are referring to heats chocolate to the point where all crystals are destroyed (45 C) and then pours it on to a table to cool it down to the chocolate's working temperature? And he does not cool it to about 27 C first? Where do the right crystals come from in this case? My understanding was that they are formed at lower temperatures (than the working temperature). Or is he using the seeding method? I am not arguing I am trying to understand how this works.

Hello keychris, this is interesting because I always thought that I need to go through a cooling stage before rising to the working temperature. Would you please explain why going to the working temperature skipping the cooling phase works? Or did I misunderstand what you said?

Hello, my name is Konstantin, I registered just a few days ago. I found this site in web search results, when I was looking for information on chocolate tempering, etc, and realized right away that it is worthwhile to join. Maybe I will learn a thing or two. Because I just started doing this, and I do it on my own. I do not go to a culinary school, nothing like that. I am an engineer, and I do not know what happened, but gradually I developed a strong interest in baking and sugar confectionery. Never did it before. Specifically, I want to learn how to make spiced cookies. This is a very popular treat in Russia, this is where I am from originally. Since Germany also has very similar types of cookies/pies, I am interested in their spiced cookies and breads too. But again, I barely started, and it turned out that baking is not an easy task, especially baking spiced breads.