What's your favoriate home tempering technique?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sarah Hart on May 13, 2008 at 10:52am

Quick question-- how warm is your room temperature?

Permalink Reply by Patrick Sikes on May 13, 2008 at 1:20pm

On average, it is probably 79-82 degrees F. If I crank up the AC for a couple hours before I can get it down to 75 or so pretty easy.

However the tempering machines put off quite a bit of heat themselves, so that is also a problem.

When we were doing production for the business, we got the kitchen down to 68 or so.

Humidity may be another factor also. Colorado was always dry, it is usually 60-80% here. Although it is very dry today (29%)..but no time for chocolate tonight...

Patrick

Permalink Reply by Sarah Hart on May 13, 2008 at 5:38pm

I bet humidity does have something to do with it, for sure. But you should be able to hand temper even in an 80 degree room. I like the good old seed method best. I wonder if you might want to do the seed in part with your bowl over some iced water to get it to the lower temp faster.

Permalink Reply by Patrick Sikes on May 14, 2008 at 8:06pm

Bowl of ice...that's a good idea. Unfortunately I don't think there is an easy or effective way of decreasing humidity, but maybe a quicker temper will help with thickening and blooming from the high humidity.

Thanks for ideas!

Permalink Reply by Steven Lebowitz on August 10, 2008 at 5:52pm

I live near Washington DC and I find that as the height of summer approaches and the humidity goes way up that chocolate begins behaving badly. Milk chocolate is especially finicky. I too will crank up the AC and bring down the temperature to about 70 F. This also helps to dry out the air a bit.

Permalink Reply by JOE CREVINO on August 11, 2008 at 7:37am

Humidity ideally should be below 50% and room temp should be aroud 68-70. The other factor is the way you cool the melted chocolate. Too fast or too slow will cause a problem. You have experiment at bit to get the right rate.