Posted by Gerard on April 01, 1999 at 21:18:14:
In Reply to: Re: Chocolate viscosity posted by Ardis on March 31, 1999 at 20:33:46:
Its a common misconception to confuse viscosity with thrixotropic quality.
Adding cocoa butter with thin it out but can leave the surface coat too thin for practical handling.
Shaking or vibrating the coated pieces will start the choc flowing and remove excess choc.
With hand dipped truffles you can shakes it in your hand to knock the extra choc off, shake it bake into the batch obviously.
Then roll the truffle in your fingers and drop, takes 5 seconds.
Machine (big)enrobers have shakers to remove air from the batch and again after they pass under the enrober to remove excess coating before the item passes onto the belt for the cooling tunnel.
Viscosity refers to the thinness, thrixotropy is the flow quality.
Ketchup have high thrix' rate but will flow like water if vibrated.
If molding just tap the mold rapidly and the choc will run out and still leave a nice thick coat.
Personally I've never had any luck with trying to melt and retain temper, it can be done but isn't reliable, tabliering is quick and dirty.
A full cycle temper is the best way, melt to 120 for 20 minutes to completly dissolve all crystals(stir slowly), cool to 83 and raise to 90-91.
Cocoa barry Noire couverture is a much thinner couverture and I use that, mixing with van leer which is much thicker if I need.
If you really want to know about choc try asking a choc engineer, they are the only people I know who understand, even the mfgers have sketchy info.
Cheers, Gerard