30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASEFine Chocolates: Gold brings together Jean-Pierre Wybauw's four previous volumes in a single 704-page book, making it the most comprehensive guide to chocolate work available in English.
Wybauw came from the industrial side rather than pastry, which explains the book's entire approach. Where most chocolate books are collections of recipes, he treats the subject as food science, with shelf life as the governing condition.
The crucial insight is water activity. A filled chocolate with excessively high water activity will develop mould regardless of how clean the production process is, while below the critical threshold mould cannot grow at all. That is why chocolates from a shop keep for months while yours last ten days, and it is a matter of calculation rather than skill. Sugars, sorbitol, invert sugar and alcohol all affect water binding and therefore shelf life.
Tempering is treated just as systematically. Cocoa butter can crystallise in six different forms, and only one of them provides gloss, snap and the correct melting point. The book explains the temperature curves, why chocolate develops a greyish bloom, and the difference between fat bloom and sugar bloom.
Beyond that, it covers ganache techniques and why emulsions split, moulding, dipping, shells, decoration and a large number of recipes with proportions specified so they can be scaled.
480 photographs. This is a book that assumes you intend to make and sell chocolates, or at the very least take confectionery seriously.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 704
Number of photographs: 480
Publisher: Lannoo
ISBN: 9789401433426
Language: English
First published: 2016
