Melting chocolate without a dedicated melter

[pastrygirl]

6 hours ago, Elle Bee said:

1. Anyone have any experience melting chocolate in a proofing oven? And if so, what is your process?

 

Not exactly, but since my gas oven stays warm from the pilot light, I've melted lots of chocolate and cocoa butter in there by leaving it overnight.  I think it's about 95F?  How high can your 'proof' function be set?

 

I think if you have silk then don't worry about keeping the chocolate below a certain temp, especially of it's not fluid enough to work with at that temp.  Go ahead and melt it at 93 or 95 and let it cool a bit before adding silk to temper. 

 

Agree that you can leave it melted for days, though the fats and solids can separate after a while.  Also agree with covering. Dust exists, and it just seems like best practice.  There is no water in pure chocolate so no condensation will form.

[Elle Bee]

Thanks, @pastrygirl, that's all super helpful. The temperature information in particular—about being able to take it to a quite a bit higher temp and then use silk—gives me a lot more confidence that this might actually work. I just fiddled around with the Proof setting and it will go up to 105F. I've just set it to 93F and will see what happens. I'm not going to get around to trying to use it anymore tonight, so it can just hang out in the oven until I revisit it in the morning.

 

Using this oven is not going to be a viable long term solution for me, since it's in our regular kitchen and my actual candy kitchen is a converted former wet bar area in our basement. Running up and down the carpeted stairs multiple times a day with a largish pan of melted chocolate seems... fraught with peril. 😱 And also annoying. So my plan, if this oven proofing experiment works for me, is to invest in a decent proofing box that I can conveniently keep on the counter in the candy kitchen. 
 

By the way, it was some previous posts of yours regarding using the heat from your gas oven pilot light for melting that made me think about using my oven and the proof function, so thanks for that as well. 👍

[Jim D.]

@Elle Bee An additional thought about trying to keep chocolate in temper while melting it:  It's very difficult to do.  Greweling mentions it as a way to melt chocolate from the bag and keep it in temper--but for ganache.  So it is somewhat easy for the small amount required for ganache, but for large amounts, the chocolate will probably stay quite viscous and will need to be taken well beyond the temper stage, then brought back down.  Silk makes all this so much easier.

 

And to add to your future equipment possibilities:  I use a dehydrator to melt colored cocoa butter and large amounts of chocolate overnight and am very pleased with it.  I can melt milk chocolate in the Mol d'Art while simultaneously melting dark in the dehydrator.  No equipment I have found maintains an exact temperature, including the Mol d'Art and the dehydrator, but, as you know, chocolate life means adjusting to reality in ever-changing ways.

 

I also must comment on your dislike of running up and down stairs constantly:  I do it with 14 stairs dozens of times a day.  That's what makes it possible to snack from the chocolate bag from time to time.  😁

[Elle Bee]

@Jim D. thanks for the additional info! I read in some other thread a while back about your use of a dehydrator and thought that was a great idea. I'll have to go back and find it again, but I seem to remember thinking that the one you use might be a bit large for my space. One benefit of the proofing box I've been considering is that it collapses and could be easily transported—nice for me, since I also bake a lot of bread when we're up at our cabin or when I go to visit my dad. 
 

As for the stairs, I do indeed run up and down them about a million times a day—or at least that's what it seems like (plus my art studio is on our second floor, so maybe it's more like two million 😂). It's not that I mind a lot of running up and down (great exercise!). ... it's more about being someone who's both easily distracted and not particularly coordinated, and I fear it would just be a matter of time before I trip on the carpeted stairs while carrying a large pan of melted chocolate.

Ooh, and speaking of melted chocolate... turning my proofing temp up in the oven to 93F (thanks for that tip, @pastrygirl!) worked perfectly. So I guess it's time to stop procrastinating and actually get on with the task of making a ganache in the way I'm not quite comfortable with... yet.

 

Thanks again to both of you. I know from experience that so many confectionery questions do in fact end up answering themselves (often in multiple successful ways) once we decide to JUST DO IT and find out. But even so, it's really nice to have a higher comfort level before jumping in. 

 

[Elle Bee]

Oops, forgot to mention... in case anyone is wondering, this Brod and Taylor proofing box is the one I'm thinking of getting.

[Jim D.]

3 minutes ago, Elle Bee said:

Oops, forgot to mention... in case anyone is wondering, this Brod and Taylor proofing box is the one I'm thinking of getting.

I have one of those.  I don't mean to discourage you, but I find assembling it each time a very annoying task.  And because it's nowhere near airtight, I wouldn't expect it to hold temp very accurately (which may not be an issue for you).  I did, however, find a great use for the little tray that holds water to provide the moisture in the proof box:  I lay it on top of parchment, and when I'm letting chocolate sit to form a shell, I put the mold on that tray.  In that way the mold doesn't drip so much chocolate down onto the parchment, and I can maintain a hint of neatness.

[Elle Bee]

@Jim D. Hmmmm. Good to know about your experience with it. Before I saw your latest comment, I was cruising around the forum searching for mentions of it and came across a bread thread where one of the bakers mentioned also using it on occasion for chocolate. @DianaB, I think it was you? I know you love it for bread (which I would also use it for), but do you still use yours for melting chocolate?

[Saltychoc]

On 1/31/2024 at 2:50 PM, Elle Bee said:

@Jim D. Hmmmm. Good to know about your experience with it. Before I saw your latest comment, I was cruising around the forum searching for mentions of it and came across a bread thread where one of the bakers mentioned also using it on occasion for chocolate. @DianaB, I think it was you? I know you love it for bread (which I would also use it for), but do you still use yours for melting chocolate?

My main concern with using it for both purposes would be cross contact. I'm not sure if you are planning to sell the chocolate? My #2 most asked question (after "do you make these?" ha) is "are any of these gluten free?". You couldn't realistically call any of them gluten free if the chocolate was sharing a space with flour.  But then again you can always add a "may contain gluten" disclaimer.

 

I find the dehydrator is best for melting large quantities of cocoa butter, especially when using many colors. I set it up the night before and put it on a timer. I monitor the temp with a bluetooth/wifi thermometer. The best part is that it's very light, durable plastic, only 2 parts, cools down quickly, and is easy to store. To quickly melt a decent amount of chocolate I'll use an appropriately sized hotel pan on a countertop warming tray. The kind with the glass top. I also use this to keep cocoa butter at temp while spraying and to have a source of warmer (out of temper) chocolate to thin out the tempered chocolate in the melter if I am shelling a lot. I initially got the warming tray to clean molds and it's turned out to be very helpful.

 

[Elle Bee]

Thanks, @Saltychoc! Good point about cross-contamination—I never thought about that. Even though I'm not selling anything I make, I give A LOT of it away, and do always like to provide people with ingredient and allergen information. So that's really useful to know.

 

I did get the proofing box and am going to try it out. Worst case, I decide it's not a good fit for me in the candy kitchen and I either return it to Amazon or take it up to our cabin to use only for bread-making. 
 

I am very interested in hearing more about your countertop warming tray. Do you have a link you could share? Also, since you mentioned it in the same paragraph as the dehydrator, I'm not clear whether you're using the warming tray in the dehydrator or just to keep the chocolate/cocoa butters warm while they're out of the dehydrator. Will you please clear that up for me?

[Saltychoc]

@Elle Bee For sure! I don't make wheat products and gluten free products on the same day but I do share space with someone who uses a lot of wheat flour. People with severe allergies or autoimmune conditions will likely avoid anything they don't have exact info on but good to be precise.

 

It's just this cheap warming tray (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). The temp control isn't very precise but it's great to have, it keeps the cocoa butter warm while it is out of the dehydrator. I use a lot of those little stainless cups to keep small amounts of cocoa butter warm. They are the kind that sauces come in at many restaurants, I get them from a restaurant supply store. I also use it to keep a 1/4 or 1/2 size hotel pan of chocolate warm (around 38/100) to add to the melter when I am shelling a lot of molds. I use an excalibur dehydrator (older version) to melt and keep things warm otherwise. It has the removable front which makes it much more durable.

[DianaB]

On 1/31/2024 at 7:50 PM, Elle Bee said:

@Jim D. Hmmmm. Good to know about your experience with it. Before I saw your latest comment, I was cruising around the forum searching for mentions of it and came across a bread thread where one of the bakers mentioned also using it on occasion for chocolate. @DianaB, I think it was you? I know you love it for bread (which I would also use it for), but do you still use yours for melting chocolate?

I use the box at least weekly for bread but gave up attempting to use it for chocolate.  I am very much an amateur chocolate maker creating the most basic confections and since discovering a method for tempering that works for me using a microwave and cocoa butter I have stuck with that.  The box is great for bread, easy to wipe down after use; much less simple to clean when clarted with chocolate 😐

 

My husband!’s nephew is highly allergic to gluten and can’t eat anything made in a kitchen where flour is used.  He spent much of his childhood in hospital until coeliac conditions were better understood.  I don’t even offer him drinks from our kitchen for fear of contamination in a space where bread and pastry are regularly manipulated.  Of course there are people with a gluten sensitivity able to cope with foods created in a not gluten free environment but one really needs to know the recipient if giving or selling foodstuffs. 

[Elle Bee]

@DianaB thanks for that reply and for the reminder of how dangerous even trace amounts of gluten can be for people with coeliac disease. So sorry about your nephew. 😢 I am fortunate to have a dedicated candy kitchen in the basement of our home. No oven there, so all my baking happens upstairs in the main kitchen. Still, as you point out, equipment gets shared and in any case it's a house and the same air circulates throughout, and it's a risk. I've been gifting candy to dozens of people for about 15 years now. From the beginning I've always been obsessive about asking before I send it, and clearly warning about nuts and other potential allergens... and yet it has never occurred to me to expressly state that there could be gluten contamination. That's important information and I appreciate that you caused me to focus on it. Thanks again for that.

 

As for the proofing box, oh my gosh I LOVE this thing. I'll be sharing more details in a separate post about how I'm using it, but basically I'm just using it to melt chocolate and hold it until I'm ready to use it. It's working great for me and saving me hours and hours of time. The oven in our main kitchen has a proofing function, so I will use that for bread and probably just keep the Brod and Taylor proofing box for chocolate.