Forum Activity for @Rus T

question about finishing and white spot on my chocolate

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

Please see pics. Obviously on the 3 bars pic, the left one is untempered, middle is tempered, and right is somewhat(?) tempered.

First question, does the chocolate have good shine?

Second question

As you can see, it has some white spots on the right one, and minimal spots on the middle one.

I notice this white spots occurs when the mold has some residue (maybe a sugar residue) from the previous chocolate that was molded before this one. What is this residue? and How do I prevent residue on the mold? I use a non prof mold, maybe that's the reason? Or I didn't preheat the mold.

Third question

On the second pic, you can see some holes. How do I prevent this holes?

Thanks.

updated by @Rus T: 04/11/25 09:27:36

tempering question

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

Hello,

My name is Rus. I have interests in chocolate as I love chocolate. Currently I am intrigued to make chocolate from bean to bar and have questions about tempering. Please be patient as this is my first post.

My question is a proper tempering technique. After you finish conching and refining your chocolate, it's time to temper them. Most of the beginner tempering machines are non continuous machine, means you need to seed the liquorwith a solid chocolate to bring the temperature (49 C / 120 F) to the temper temperature (30 C / 86 F).

So lets say I have just finish conching, and I need to make them into bars. Since this is the first batch, there is no solid chocolate available to seed, so you need to make one first. I read that for the first solid chocolate for the purpose to seed, you need to temper this seed chocolatefirst. My question is why do you need to temper the seed when after that, you are going to use it to temper the chocolate liquor? Can you just take some of the liquor (25-30% of the batch), then let it cool in a chocolate bar mold and then usethis cooled block seed chocolateto temper the rest of the liquor? What difference would it make in term of finish product for chocolate that used a tempered seed vs a non tempered seed (a cooled down liquor)? Isn't the purpose of seeding to bring the temperature down from 49 C (120 F) to 30C (86F) or slightly lower temp for milk and white chocolate? I read that chocolate can be tempered numerous time, so if you are having sugar bloom, you can melt them again and re seed.

Thank you.

updated by @Rus T: 04/11/25 09:27:36