Arch, the demiglace went great. I've since moved on to other things, but all the suggestions were helpful.
I think you're a little confused on the tempering issue.
Firstly, I guarantee you that milk chocolate can be tempered. I can open up about four or five books on my shelf that will say the same thing, including two professional pastry textbooks. Even white chocolate can be tempered. Bo Friberg in the Professional Pastry Chef goes on about how to temper white and milk chocolate. Pierre Herme, one of the best pastry chefs in the world, specifically instructs you to temper your milk chocolate in his own books.
I can personally attest to tempering milk chocolate with the exact same technique I use for dark chocolate, and it has the same effects. I could never do certain things without tempering my milk chocolate,
Secondly, I'm really quite sure that all chocolate, no matter who manufactures it, is tempered when you buy it. It has nothing to do with labeling, as there's no need to label chocolate tempered or untempered. This is a given. I'm not sure what you mean by "tempered for sale" versus "tempered for use in another product".
As I said, all commercially available chocolate that I have ever heard of is tempered when you buy it. If you melt it, it gets knocked out of temper, and so has to be tempered again if you want to use it in an application that requires certain characteristics of tempered chocolate.
Some chocolate may have different characteristics and may require some slight variances in temperature control when tempering, but all chocolate, ultimately, can be tempered.
What you may be confused by is the existence of certain chocolate products (typically I think known as plastic chocolate) that have many of the characterstics of tempered chocolate, without requiring any tempering on melting. I believe this is done by substituting some vegetable oil for some of the cocoa butter, or otherwise changing the composition of the chocolate. But the end product is not really chocolate anymore. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Hi Jason,
I knew you would master the sauce! There is a point when teaching, as I discovered, when one has to butt out and leave the person to explore, taste and develop their competence and confidence! In other words, one has to turn one`s back and leave them to it them to make decisions as to flavour and consistency!
Now, stop being so saucy!
This is a worldwide messageboard, composed of people from different countries, incomes, abilities and financial positions which will determine whether they buy their chocolate from a corner shop, deli or specialist supplier; a bar of Bournville, couverture, Supercook Chocolate (milk or plain) or Hershey`s bars.
You are right to say that all chocolate will have been tempered prior to selling and will therefore keep within the sell by date (in the shop) and not "bloom". Prior to selling, chocolate will have been tempered to enable it to remain stable without the creation of "bloom" whilst it sits on the shop shelf.
In the UK, I could go into many shops, supermarkets, delis, etc., and buy chocolate or products labelled as chocolate as per EC regulations which are great and flavoursome and some which are poor for use in making chocolates insofar as they lack the potential "snap" (after tempering) of a good chocolate, but are used by just melting and used for dipping.
AFAIK - it is possible to buy "pre-tempered chocolate" in the UK.
Finally, it depends, to some degree, as to regulations in the USA and EC as to what constitutes milk and white chocolate. I may be wrong, but I suspect there may be a difference and labelling may not clarify this difference when using the learned texts to which you refer.
All the best,
Archiduc
P.S. Check the law and debate re. chocolate in the EU!