Back when the Egyptians were making candy, they learned that you
could roll or stir a hard item in a bowl and it would coat itself with a coating if you
drizzled the coating and a few drops of liquid into the bowl at a slow speed as you rotate
or stir the bowl. The more you drizzled into the bowl, the heavier and thicker
the coating. What they were doing was called "panning".It is one of the most
ancient methods of making a coated candy.
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In the modern world we use a simple device that looks quite bit like a cement mixer.
Inside the drum of this mixer we place the nuts, and then we turn the drum
and the nuts start rolling. A thin spray of chocolate (cold panning) or colored
sugar water (hot panning) is directed at the nuts as they tumble. The result is
that they get coated. Each time they tumble through the chocolate mist, they add a
coating.
Below is a picture of one of our panning rooms
and chocolate molding process areas
This process is used in many ways in industry. The pharmaceutical industry makes coated
pills this way. They make the centers and then they pan the pills in a drum to
give the pill a hard coating that will dissolve in the stomach.
In the food industry, there are two common areas of panning.
The most common use is in the sugar coating of snack foods. This method is
how we make a Jordan almond. The roasted almond is tumbled through a colored sugar water
syrup mist. That is the same way we make Boston Beans and rainbow peanuts.
After the snack is coated, the batch is transferred to a finishing
drum. This is shaped a bit differently. Drums come in apple and pear
shapes. The finishing drum is more like a pear and it gives the final product
a harder and shinier coating. A special mixtures is sprayed on the batch as it
tumbles to give this finished appearance.
Sometimes the product is "stippled" in the finishing drum. An
example of this is the French burnt peanut. It has a bunch of raised areas on the final
surface, and this is done in the finishing drum by adding a dextromaltose spray that
causes the finish coat to get bumpy.
The other common use of the drum is in coating chocolates. A center core or nut is put
in the pan drum and a mist of chocolate covers the tumbling nut. The coating
can be either a white chocolate or a milk or dark chocolate. Sometimes the
item is coated in a colored chocolate. The rounded corners give away the fact that
the product was panned.
The coating of a snack preserves the item for a longer
time. A nut or fruit will not have any air reach it so it stays fresher
longer.
drawing of a chocolate pan
This method of chocolate coating is an art-form and requires expensive
equipment.
You can read more about the panning equipment
by going to Royce Metalspinning's web site
Read more about Chocolate:
 Chocolate Dipping
Chocolate Enrobing
Chocolate Depositing
Chocolate Glossary
Chocolate Tempering |
