All about Ganache

24-12-2018 | Author : Deepika Namdev

Ganache is defined as chocolate combined with cream (its your choice which brand you use, some professionals prefer using high fat crème & some lower in fat).

Technically Ganache is a stable, fat-in-water emulsion. It must contain enough water-based ingredients to create the continuous phase of the emulsion. If we talk about its chemistry – its the continuous phase, when the liquid in disperse system are suspended in solids.

There are two aspects of ganache that you should understand,

• EMULSION
• CRYSTALLIZATION OF POLYMORPHIC FAT

Understanding Ganache is very important:

• Ganache is used both in pastry (cold infusion) and confectionery (hot infusion for emulsification with fat ie chocolate). Using cold cream will be appropriate if you are making cake frosting, Mousse etc, but not advisable for chocol,ate ganache for Bonbons or truffles. Heating the crème is necessary to sanitize it (even if it is pasteurized or not, tetra packed or loose) & more importantly to provide enough heat to melt the chocolate.
• Cream is major source of water in ganache & without water fat cannot disperse & may separate & cream has high water activity ie (AW 0.80-0.85). Hence the Shelf life of ganache with cream can be only upto 3 weeks at temperature between 18-22° RT. This water activity in ganache is susceptible to spoilage which causes growth of nonpathogenic bacteria & molds. Hence to avoid this it is advisable to add invert sugar/honey/liquid glucose or alcohol when preparing ganache to have longer shelf life.,

Lets talk easy, when you heat curd without stirring, the water separates from the fat, when it reaches a temperature above 32 and at the other hand when you continue to stir the curd, while on heat you disperse the system or say you emulsify the fat & water together and the curd doesn’t separates or curdles! Similar is the Ganache system !

To avoid curdling one should not overheat the ganache with cream that is too hot and let it cool slowly & steadily at RT. This solidifies the cocoa butter before there is time for the molten droplets to merge into larger droplets. Ganache is a water in fat emulsion in which the water from the cream as well as the fat from the cocoa butter in Chocolate are dispersed into continuous liquid phase. To avoid curdling one should not overheat the ganache with cream that is too hot and let it cool slowly & steadily at RT. At the other hand, Pouring warm cream over the chocolate will melt nearly all of the crystallized cocoa fat in the chocolate. Preserving beta crystals is crucial because they melt quickly at body temperature, giving melt-in-your mouth feel that’s important in a good ganache.

Letting the ganache to rest at RT will allow time for cocoa butter to fully crystallize into correct form and will allow the ganache to stabilize and this trick is to have the desirable one—called a beta crystal, helping to stabilize the emulsion as it cools.

Theres still lot of science that is on molecules matrix, crystallization kinetic, polymorphism etc..