New guy here, Looking to setup a chocolate nad confectionery business!
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Allow Me to Introduce Myself
If you are on a tight budget, start with making chocolates as a hobby. Develop your skills with chocolate and sample them out to friends and family. When you start to get several dozens of replies like "You should sell these" and getting several personal orders, then you could consider a small side business similar to your wife's preserve business. Should you quit your day job and become a full time chocolatier tomorrow with no developed skills? - the answer is definitely not. Just as you developed skill as a chef, the same effort is required for professional level chocolate work.
Peter Grewelings book is excellent, but there is no such thing as too many books. There are many specialty books on chocolate and confections available. Research and buy what interests you at the time. The key to books is you actually have to use them. Don't be a collector of chocolate books, be a user of chocolate books. Collecting is easy, using them takes a lot of work.
Be willing to "unlearn" what you've learned incorrectly. No one book has "ALL" the answers. Authors of books write with certain assumptions about what you may or may not already know. There are certain details about recipes that are assumed and would be too laborious in detail to specify. This is why having many books for reference is necessary. If you are having a problem with a certain recipe, you need to be able to cross reference with other books in order to find out what you are doing wrong.
Find someone who can be critical of your results. Hopefully your wife has good taste buds and can tell you if something is good or it needs more work. Having someone keep you in line and tell you whether or not something is good is critical. Self teachers tend to be a little too easy on themselves, when they need to be corrected.
If you are going to self teach yourself chocolates and confections (as with any major subject), it will be a long road, will take much effort, there will be significant struggle, but in the end it will all be worth it.
Good luck.
