Chocolate Crystals and what's up with Tempering

I’m trying to lay out a “big picture” that logically incorporates all the info out there about chocolate tempering. I have found articles that go into depth about the underlying chemistry of chocolate, without really conveying an understanding that is helpful in tempering. I have also found many tempering methods described that include contradictory and/or confusing explanations about what is going on in the chocolate.

Trying to follow any particular method for tempering can give one person consistently great results, while another may fail to get that right temper consistently, if at all. This suggests some important information was left out of the instruction, leaving part of the process up to random chance. The step most often overlooked is the temperature of the room where chocolate is "set". Being too warm or too cold can ruin an otherwise well-executed process.

I believe this confusion and inconsistency is what makes tempering seem so mysterious and frustrating. Understanding tempering fully can help demystify chocolate, and free you to trouble-shoot and modify the process to suit your personal preferences. The following info is my internet research and personal experience folded together to build a consistent story for how chocolate behaves. Please leave comments if anything comes across unclear or inaccurate.

A new batch, tempered using cocoa butter "silk"

First batch. Started out tempered, but turned to type VI when "setting"
 in a room that was too warm. Flavor and texture were affected.

Dark Milk Chocolate from Nibs

Dark chocolate is made of 50-90% cocoa solids and butter. Milk chocolate is made of at least 12% dairy. This recipe meets both requirements, making it dark milk chocolate. It's our favorite. :)

To make chocolate from nibs, you will need a refiner/melanger. I have this one. I get my nibs and cocoa butter from https://www.cocoasupply.com.

Re-Tempered, not perfect but makes me happy, and tastes great!

Beans roasted in the Combi Oven

Roasting Cacao Nibs

 I've tried this in a convection wall oven, but the temperature fluctuates too much, I recently got a precision combi (steam) oven, and nailed it on the second try! They roast more quickly than expected, and unfortunately the first batch scorched beyond using. But the second was perfect! No steam, of course, but the precision temperature control is really great.

Ingredients

• 500 g (3.333 cup) cacao nibs

Directions

Use precision/combi oven:

1. Preheat oven.

2. Look for and remove foreign particles from the cacao nibs.

3. Spread nibs evenly on the baking sheet, and bury probe horizontally in the nibs. Place pan in oven once preheated.

4. Roast per the cooking stage table below. The first stage should take about 10 min. Remove the pan from oven and stir nibs, then place back in with the probe. The second stage should take about 10 -12 min. The nibs should smell chocolatey, like brownies.

Stage	1	2
Transition		automatic
Sous Vide	off	off
Temperature	160°	155°
%	0	0
element	top/bottom	top/bottom
fan	high	high
probe	125	150
starts	immediately	immediately
rack	2	2

Lazy Bagels in the Combi Oven

For this recipe, you need a steam oven, also called a combi oven, like the Anova Precision Oven. We got ourselves one for an early Christmas gift this year!

Asking myself how I wished I could make bagels, I had this answer: having pre-shaped bagels in the fridge already, I'd like to pull them out of the fridge, dunk them into a room-temperature bath, and put them straight into an oven. Tell the oven to proof, then steam, then bake, and go get them out when they're done. Well, guess what? It worked, and here they are!

Finally Great Biscuits!

Yours truly, a bread baker, has finally done it! In the eyes of my family, my homemade biscuits have gone from "not as good as those from the freezer or a can", to "the best biscuits we have had anywhere"! Then they whipped up sausage and sawmill gravy to go with, and pulled out the homemade jam. Southern biscuits through and through, only as sweet as what you put on them!

Cooking on 500° preheated cast iron makes some of the butter melt out of the bottom and sizzle, while the biscuits rise and bake in 8 minutes flat! The bottoms are golden and lightly crunchy. Steam rises out of the soft, fluffy insides when you rip one in half. Worthy to be eaten with butter alone.

This is a combination of recipes from White Lily and

A Blogger's Note

I keep my recipes each in its own Google Doc. It's great! Easy to search, easy to share, always accessible. In the kitchen, I've got a touch screen where I can read the recipe, and edit there if I want. When I've got a winner, since I'm using Google Blogger, I'm just a short copy and paste from a nice blog post, right? Hahaha; nope. It looks good in edit mode, but is terrible in preview and as a post

In Blogger Help, I found a thread called "How to convert Google Drive document to a Blog Post in Blogger?". The tips there just blew up all the text or at best stripped the formatting. Redoing all that sure takes out all the fun of making a post.

I Figured Out the Secret!!

This one cheap trick that Doctors don't want you to know....

File/Download your Google Doc as a *.rtf file on your hard drive, then double-click it. For me, it opened in Word - Compatibility Mode. Looked pretty good; had to do extra-huge line spacing, but otherwise it looked great when pasted here in Blogger! Woohoo! 

The Blogger Help thread was closed, with a really terrible "best answer", so I figured I'd post it here, in case I forget, and in case anybody else is looking for a better answer.

Serious Mac & Cheese in the Slow Cooker

Seriously. This is it. About seven years ago, I had some fantastic Mac at a potluck; I have been trying to find a recipe to match that memory ever since. That’s usually a hopeless quest, but I have found the one! Visit the original post for a discussion on sodium citrate, how this recipe works, etc. Thank you, Serious Eats, and perhaps also Modernist Cuisine.

I’ve adapted this recipe for making in a slow cooker instead of a casserole. One recipe is about 3 quarts. A double-batch fills a 7 quart slow cooker nicely, with some room to stir. I also added Benefiber and switched from Panko to Ritz crackers for the topping. The nice thing is, the crackers shower down deeper in the pot as you serve, so everybody gets some. So far I haven't gotten a photo before we ate it all; I'll have to try again!

Variations to try sometime (I haven’t gotten over the original yet though):
Replace water with flavorful liquids like beer and/or chicken stock.

Rice, in the Instant Pot

I now own an Instant Pot, hazzah! I got one for my son to take to college, and decided it only made sense that I have one at home too. That way, I can try out recipes here, and he can just make the ones that are worthwhile in his limited free time. 

I tried hard boiled eggs, and they were super easy to peel and turned out perfectly. Then we tried spaghetti and meatballs, and it was a failure. Didn't really save any time, and was definitely not as good as just boiling a pot of pasta and topping with sauce from a jar and meatballs from the freezer. 

Rice is an obvious choice, and I've made four pots of it today. We found an article on 

Green Healthy Cooking, where Lorena made many pots of rice to find the perfect way. I tried the 1:1 water to rice ratio, and it does work nicely! 

On my first batch, I used the "rice" button on the machine, because it should work, right? It did make rice, but not as well as a rice cooker. I tried again using High Pressure instead, per Lorena's instructions, and it came out pretty nicely. Then I tried rinsing the rice first, and the rice was fluffier, a little softer, and less sticky. I tried it one last time, with more salt and some butter, and that did the trick for me! Nicely salted, subtle butter flavor and richness, and the rice didn't stick to the bottom of the pot.

Rice in the Instant Pot

Yield: about 2.75 cups cooked rice per 1 cup uncooked rice.

Notes:

• Butter keeps the rice from sticking to the pot, makes the rice rich, and adds flavor.

Bam! Worcestershire Sauce Dex++

When I got my first Emeril cookbook, many years ago, the first thing I tried was the first recipe that was listed, Worcestershire Sauce. I was curious about what went into it. I canned it and set it in the pantry, and we didn't touch it for a long time, because, well, it seemed strange. One day though, we needed some for a recipe, and opened a jar; that opened our eyes, wow it was good stuff!

Now this is THE required secret ingredient in our burgers. We also reach for it when a recipe is just a little lame, and needs some complexity and depth of flavor. This is the stuff that even the kids are concerned if we run out of. Who'd have thought? My daughter actually took it with her on a beach trip with friends, for their grilled burgers.

Worcestershire, pickles, and hot bread from the oven will be high on the list of things the kids look forward to coming home for (and taking back with them) once they've moved out on their own.

I've done my Dex-magic to the recipe, since the original has quite a lot of sugar in it.

Same-Day Ice Cream Dex#

Ice cream is such a wonderful spontaneous treat, it's hard to say "no" when heading home from a special family event. Then, more and more events are "special", and next thing you know, it's a habit. I can make it healthier, but most recipes have you prepping the "mix" the day before, and then there's the ice to deal with, or the canister-thing to manage in the freezer. To really be what I need, it must compete with the convenience of an ice cream shop.
The requirements for pulling this off:
- No cooking, so the mix doesn't need chilling.
- Flavor and texture that can compete with Baskin Robbins.
- Spontaneous; zero to ice cream in about an hour.

I've held this recipe back for a while though. Firstly because it seemed too amazing to just give away. Got over that; there's no way I'm quitting my day job and opening an ice cream parlor.
Secondly, because it has raw egg yolks in it. That doesn't really bother me or my family, but if I share it with other people, that's different. Now that I've worked out how to pasteurize eggs, there are no more excuses!

Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza

My son went on a band trip to Chicago, and they had some really great pizza at Gino's. I then had a pizza discussion with my office-mate, who is from Chicago, and she explained that while Gino's is really good, and is made with cornmeal in the crust, she prefers Giordanos, which by the way can be mail-ordered. Obviously my husband immediately mail-order stuffed pizzas from Giordanos; for research, you understand.

We all really enjoyed the pizza, which is clearly an entirely different thing from our usual pizzas. My son, however, still preferred his memories of Gino's. Next step: find a recipe for pizza like Gino's!

LAL’s Sourdough Sandwich Buns, Schlotzky's copycat

My husband really likes Schlotzsky's sandwiches. I like baking bread, and figuring out how to make things. Naturally, he eventually wanted me to recreate Schlotzsky's buns at home. Tonight, he has made sandwiches with my creation, and declared them a dead-on match. I think they're a little softer and lovelier than the original, but I'm probably biased. ;)

There are several recipes floating around out there, but most don't make a bun with a texture and flavor that are really like the original.