SCIENCE BEHIND CHOCOLATE GANACHE BY ALEKSANDR NENOGLYADOV
WHY DOES GANACHE SPLIT OR GANACHE AS EMULSION
If you're in rush: if your ganache got split, try to add a bit of milk and agitate slightly. Why milk? The idea is that milk is mostly water, but not quite and it's likely that you have extensive fats in ganache, so just adding more heavy cream doesn't really work. You also, probably, don't want to add plain water, so milk is the best alternative. But if you want to find the exact reason, please read the article below.
Ganache is one of the most important part of your business. You will use it in almost every single bonbon, so you should really have a good understanding how does it work. This is the second post in series of posts about ganaches which brings you first hints of where to start. Don't forget to check the first one here.
Ganache is substance where any liquid ingredients, such as cream, purées or even water combined with melted chocolate. As result, well-prepared ganache has a creamy, smooth texture, melts in mouth pretty quickly. Despite the simplicity of ingredients, ganache is a surprisingly complex system - a combination of fats, liquids, dissolved sugar, and solids that, only when handled correctly, provides correct outcome product.
I think the most common issue I encountered on practice, while creating ganache, is emulsion separation.
Why does ganache split? Excessive fat causes ganache to separate because the fat droplets are packed together so closely that they can no longer remain discrete. Once the fat droplets coalesce, they will float to the surface, resulting in separation (fats are separated from water content). Extensive agitation also can cause separation. Separated ganache should never be used in final product (that what causes cracks on bonbons' shells and water leaks from the bottom).
Vanilla-chestnut ganache
It's important always to keep water and fat content in balance and know nutrition of your ingredients. Many things come from practice. To illustrate my point, let's consider simple ganache: Dark Chocolate 64% 100g, Heavy Cream 35% 100g. You can notice that ratio is 1:1. It was obtained practically. Pay attention on percentage of chocolate and cream. Cream 35% means it contains 35% of fat content and the rest is mostly water. So if you use different cream or chocolate, the ratio will be different. Things become more complex as you increase number of ingredients. For instance, if you add butter to recipe, you should take into account its' fats and add some water content. If you add puree, which is mostly water, you want to increase amount of fat by adding i.e. chocolate or cocoa butter.
Usually ganache contains much more, than just fat and water, there are sugars, milk solids and other ingredients. All of them affect emulsion. Again, there is no a gold rule of how everything should be combined together to always get perfect results, that's why ganache is complex topic. But there is a good news: during the practice, you start noticing common patterns, thus making less mistakes. Understanding what influence on your ganache emulsion is the first step to find a problem with your recipe.
I'm also currently working on software which would help you to create perfect ganaches without wasting your time and resources. It's already on theconfit.com. And what is more important: you can try it absolutely for free. Try to create your first recipe there and click "Verify". You will see some hints of how your ganache can be improved. Check out my YouTube video where I explain how does it work and how to fix broken ganache: click here to watch a video.
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