[davidinnorcal]

Afternoon.

I am an Interior Designer and novice Pastry Chef. Wanting to tap in to the pastry experience within Chef Talk in hopes of some success in finding and locating a source for an under granite slab cooling element. What I thought would be something easy to find, I am quickly not finding anything.

Essentially doing a complete kitchen gut and remodel. Outside of my primary passion as an Interior Designer, I am a novice cook and pastry chef, WITH passion. I am trying to find a "radiant heat" configuration but for "radiant COOL" instead to chill the counter top.

Radiant Heat offers a coil configuration and there has to be something similar that offers a cool or cold coil that I can install in a specified area in my yet-to-be completed kitchen island that will give me an area to pursue pastry magic.

Anyone have ideas, recommendations or suggestions on where I can find something to chill the island slab? Thanks in advance for your help and ideas.

Regards,

David

Granite Bay, CA

[email protected] (email)

DavidinNorCal (ChefTalk handle)

 

[chefbuba]

Check with local hvac companies, explain that you want a temperature controlled slab. Might have to be a custom job.

 

[foodpump]

What a lot of commercial co.s do is build a undercounter fridge without a top, and then slap a marble slab on top. These work quite well, even in hit crowded commercial kitchens

I have worked with specific made marble tops with refrigeration coils underneath. Very noisy, spews out a lot of hot air, and in the end we just switched the unit off and used the marble slab on its own.

 

[cheflayne]

I have worked with specific made marble tops with refrigeration coils underneath. Very noisy, spews out a lot of hot air, and in the end we just switched the unit off and used the marble slab on its own.

Yeah this. Marble does pretty good without supervision.

What I thought would be something easy to find, I am quickly not finding anything.

Maybe there are reasons for this. I love out of the box thinking, but sometimes all I encounter when I get outside of the box is just endless space.

 

[scott livesey]

might be better off having a dedicated shelf in your freezer where you could chill a piece of countertop scrap.  go to Home Depot and spend $5 for a 12" x 12" granite or marble tile and test the concept.  

 

[foodpump]

Well, save yourself $5.00, because I can tell you what will happen with 12" frozen tiles.

Within the first 5 minutes of taking the tile out of the freezer, your dough--especially if thin, will freeze or get so stiff that it is impossible to roll out.

Within the the next 5 minutes the tile will sweat profusely as it warms up, and your dough will become wet and sticky. In other words, condesation happens. Ideally, the slab should have no more than 10 degrees temp difference between itself and room temp in order to avoid the whole condensation issue.

So why were marble slabs such a big deal back in the day?

Ideal fir chocolate work. Mind you, the slab must NOT be refrigerated, just cooler than room temp. Very easy to clean, you just run your scaper (a s/s drywall 10" spatula) over it and you're done.

For confectionary work, you can pour hot caramel on it and it won't buckle or warp

For pastry work, but nothing to do with refrigeration, its just this massive, heavy hunk that won't move, jiggle, wobble, or shimmy on you.(uh..that is assuming the table it rests on is built like a tank too). Its also easy to clean as well.

Hope this provides some insight...

 

[chefwriter]

I found a polished marble slab at an antique store, 4 feet long, 20 inches wide and 3/4 of an inch thick. I have it on some wheeled metro shelving on top of a similar size piece of wood.

Works great as a kitchen island, doesn't move and works great for those times I do pastry and dough. No cooling required. Always cooler than the room, even in summer. Scrape it often with a dough scraper and wipe down with a wet cloth. A little soap and water to clean off the coffee stains.