Building the perfect professional chocolate kitchen

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ilana on January 3, 2011 at 9:15am

Hello. I use a basement. I have different problems-but some are similar. I use an air conditioning unit in our hot months-which also lowers humidity. Please remember that you need a bigger than normal unit if you have a fridge or tempering maching as they generate heat. I also have a de humidifying unit, which in order to de humidify does put out some heat... I would say that I manage well at 65% humidity although lower is better. I keep windows closed quite often as light is not great for chocolate.

Permalink Reply by Maria Wande on January 13, 2011 at 9:23am

Thank you so much Ilana. I do realize I need to use a de humidifying unit and perhaps also an air conditioning dito, but hopefully not more than that..:) . You don't happen to know the ideal room temperature for a chocolate kitchen?

Permalink Reply by Nat on January 16, 2011 at 4:40am

Maria,

 

I assume you'llbe doing tempering for your pralines. If so you'll need to  get the humidity down below 50%, above which chocolate can be very difficult to temper. And I'd keep the temp around 68-72° F. If you using molds, however, make sure they are warmed up to 8F° F or so for dark chocolate so it doesn't shock the tempered chocolate as you put it in the molds, especially for thicker polycarbonate molds. We had trouble with blooming and dull finish even with humidity below 50% and well tempered chocolate when it went into molds that were at room temp.

 

-Nat

____________________

Nat Bletter, PhD

Chocolate R&D

Madre Chocolate

http://madrechocolate.com

Permalink Reply by Maria Wande on January 17, 2011 at 5:37am

Great, this is very interesting information. Many thanks! Indeed I have experienced the problems you mention without really understanding where it went wrong and that is so frustrating.

Permalink Reply by Nat on January 17, 2011 at 7:00pm

I just saw my typo, that should be 86° F for the molds. Sorry I was typing in hexadecimal notation yesterday!

Permalink Reply by Maria Wande on January 18, 2011 at 5:11am

OK, thanks - and no problem - I still have to look up the equivalent in Celsius degrees! :)

Permalink Reply by Arun Bhargava on January 19, 2011 at 3:56am

Nat, great advise. Just a question.. how do yo warm the moulds?

Permalink Reply by Maria Wande on January 19, 2011 at 4:33am

Arun, I'm no expert, but I know that "hot air guns" (please forgive my direct translation from Swedish) or even hair dryers can be used. Any one else?

Permalink Reply by Nat on January 23, 2011 at 4:21pm

Hair dryers are pretty essential in chocolate making both for spot warming things and for making sure all equipment is completely free of water before you add the chocolate to it. I usually dry stuff off with a towel and then use the hair dryer until it is bone dry.

 

For warming molds I've used that and putting it in a melting tray at a really low temp (86° F), but the melting tray did weird things to the temper so I think I'd set it lower in the future as some parts of the mold were too hot.

____________________

Nat Bletter, PhD

Chocolate R&D

Madre Chocolate

http://madrechocolate.com