Hey Members

I've been making good headway with my chocolateexceptthat after a couple of weeks in the fridge it gets grainy.. nodiscolorationto suggest bloom n it still tastes great but themouth feelis like chocolate coated castor sugar n this happens after a couple of weeks

any ideas n inputs are greatly appreciated

Regards

Chirag Bhatia

updated by @chirag-bhatia: 04/18/15 07:12:06

There are two types of bloom, sugar bloom and fat bloom. It sounds like it's sugar bloom. Chocolate should NEVER be in the fridge.

George is correct, refrigerators are generally too cold for storing chocolate. A grainy texture may also develop in time when there is a wide variation in temperature between the chocolate (too hot) and the mold (too cold).

Ok, I'm new here and this makes me curious. When Adam and George say chocolate should never be in the refrigerator, does that mean finished chocolates or bulk chocolate (callets, etc.)?

Chocolate stores best at around mid to high 50*F. Refrigerators are generally colder than this but the larger concern is that they are moist environments.With that being said, you can store your chocolate in a refrigerator in a well sealed plastic container with a couple of layers of paper towel around the chocolate to absorb any moisture. Bring the chocolate in the container up to room temperature before opening it to keep the cold chocolate from pulling moisture from the air and forming condensation. This is quite a bit of hassle and risk forcommercialproduction in my opinion.

If warm chocolate in the mold or chocolate that has been inadequatelytempered -- as I mentioned earlier -- is placed in a cold environment it will start to pull the sugar in the chocolate itself to the surface (sugar bloom) obviously quicker in the former case.

Are you talking about your ganache core or the shell?

I always enjoy when people say you can'trefrigerateor freeze your chocolate. Sure you can. It just takes care and recipe testing. We work in stages and all our cores are prepped ahead of time. Cores whether spherical or square are refigerated, we at times might freeze blocks of ganache if we're not ready to work through it yet. We focus on bulk enrobing runs, once readywe return to room temperature before the run.

Now at that point you have to think about chocolates contraction/expansion and freezing enrobed chocolates will more than likely crack in the flux. We treat our chocolates well and keep them at about 65'-68' from here on out.

So again, where is your grain, just the shell or in the core or in both? What kind of ganache are you making? A water, cream, syrup? Is it consistent across your infusions? What kind of infusion? Is it a pre-extracted infusion or an oil?

So much multivariate testing. :D Always be testing.