Greetings. I looking for guidelines for producing chocolate for panning. For example, % fat?, are…

Thanks, yes the ratios are correct. They’re set by the client. We have an opportunity to make the covertute as well as do the panning.

You’re doing very large batches with some quite hard centers to pan. The bananas will be a challenge. I do around 60-80Kg a day with a 1000mm diam pan and I never play with the chocolate. The professionals have already sorted that out.

I use good quality couverture chocolate from Callebaut and any adjustments are in the rate of applying the chocolate and the speed of the pan. For example freeze dried strawberries require a very fast initial application at a very slow pan speed and lots of manual intervention initially. Almonds require slow application at first (or they “double”) and a fast pan speed and the application speed rises as the job progresses. Apricots and ginger will be interesting. You’ll need to coat them first to stop the oils coming through the chocolate in storage. A belt coater would be a dream but only for some products – like coffee beans. They’d wreck come of the products you plan to do.

Are you sure of your ratios? I usually do around 1:10 but different products require different ratios.

All the best with that. 🙂

Thanks for the answer. We will be panning cherry, almond, walnut and cashew @ a 65/choc to 35/center ratio. Also coconut, banana, ginger and apricots at a 70/40 ratio. Working with large batches (1000 lb./day) The client is asking for organic dark choc. I think trying a 2 ingredient chocolate would be a mistake. What might be a good starting point for a recipe formulation?

@B-P –

In part it depends on what you plan to pan and what the ratio of chocolate to center is.

For example, it’s much harder to coat whole cashews than macadamia nuts because of their shape. If I were to be coating cashews, especially if I wanted to small ratio of chocolate:nut I would want to use a chocolate that is very fluid (low viscosity).

The amount of fat – including added fat – in the chocolate would depend on its cocoa percentage. An emulsifier such as lecithin is certainly not necessary but if you have a thick chocolate there are three options: add cocoa butter, add lecithin, add cocoa butter and lecithin.

If you are going to be panning in small batches there is a lot of hands-on work to be done breaking up clumps of whatever it is you are panning. A thicker chocolate might make this a tad harder, but someone is in their hands on most of time so it’s not all that significant. If you were panning on a large/industrial scale then viscosity and especially consistent viscosity is extremely important.

Some of the difference in viscosity can be accommodated by changing the temperature of the air being pumped into the pan. It is not necessary to use tempered chocolate to pan, so there is a little more wiggle room in terms of the temperature – though in general you want to be blowing in colder air. You can warm things up if things start to clump too fast.

Also, in general, belt coaters are more forgiving than pans when it comes to temperature, and they are easier to learn to use and easier to use than metal pans when scaling up.