6 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:Dark chocolate? Heat up as high as 34.5 and see what happens.
Short answer, with the bowl set for 34.5 (I'm translating to degrees Canadian here) the edges of the chocolate mass are melting. But the middle of the lump was still around 31 last time I looked.
To back up here was the setup this afternoon:
This is 600 grams of chocolate. The rest of the bag I vacuumed sealed in 500 gram aliquots. With the bowl set for 50C the chocolate melted readily. It never had to get warmer than 47C. However it took forever for the melted chocolate to cool down to 25C. I dared not try an ice bath because I did not want to risk seizing the chocolate. In this case "forever" was about two hours.
The chocolate was fluid at 25C but I'm pretty sure too thick for molding. A dab on freezer paper refrigerated for about five minutes was shiny, crisp, and lovely. But as I stirred and stirred with the bowl set for 32C the mass of chocolate got more solid, not more fluid.
I may keep the bowl at 34.5C overnight to see what transpires. Unfortunately I suspect I may have to melt the whole thing down and start over. If so, what should I do differently? I'm trying alcohol to help. I resisted the urge to add cocoa butter.
Edit: the kitchen was 20C at 45% relative humidity.
