at Tue, 09 May 2006 17:12:34 GMT in <6448g.405$Ky5.323@trndny08>,
(Janet Puistonen) wrote :

>Inconsistency is driving me crazy. I continue to find that intermittent
>streakiness is a problem with dipped items. This is driving me mad. Is it
>simply impossible to reliably achieve good results unless one has a
>completely climate-controlled production area?

What chocolate are you using? Occasionally problems with temper are due to
a mismatch of chocolate with temper specifications. For that matter, you
may want to experiment with tempering profiles to see if you can get some
improvement. Be sure to take detailed notes on each production run so that
you can spot an obvious variable out of range if there is one.

Different types of chocolate, as you no doubt know, also require different
tempering profiles. If you're using the same tempering profile for
different chocolates, then it could be a specific type that's creating the
grief. Also if you're getting problems immediately after switchover from
one type of chocolate to the other (say, a high-cocoa-butter 70% to a
medium-cocoa-butter milk) then you could still inadvertently be working
with the old profile.

Are you blending couvertures from multiple sources? If so you will need to
be particularly careful in balancing fat percentages and readjusting
tempering profiles.

How quickly are you cooling your chocolate? Really sudden cooling could
also promote temper problems (and the all-too-familiar cracking),
especially if there's a large difference between your cooling set-up and
the ambient temperature.

Then there's the question of moisture. Is your production area generally
humid, either because of ambient conditions or because there are other
sources of humidity (e.g. water-jacket equipment, double-boilers, etc.)?
Humidity can cause sugar bloom if excessive. If your fillings are primarily
high-moisture it could cause problems after many chocolates have been
dipped.

The most critical thing you can do is observe, observe, observe. Try to
note down every single factor you can measure - type of chocolate, fat and
sugar percentages, filling type, equipment temperature, ambient
temperature, cooling temperature, humidity at each point, time of day (I'm
not kidding), point in the production run, etc. etc. Once you can pin down
what factors contribute to the problem you are on the way to devising a
fix, or alternatively determining when conditions aren't appropriate for
making chocolates.

All this being said, you are quite right that except if you live in a
freakishly benevolent climate it's virtually impossible to avoid production
problems altogether, unless you're prepared to go the extra mile and create
calibrated tempering profiles for a wide variety of ambient conditions,
without investing in full climate control.

--
Alex Rast

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