Quote:
Originally Posted by redaddiction
Soft ball? never heard that term before.
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if you look on a candy/deep frying glass thermometer at the store it shows all the stages and the temperatures they are at
soft ball was termed (im told) because when you drip the sugar into a glass of water it forms a soft ball to tell you its ready or if its mushy and doesn't form a ball, then you know it needs more cooking. the idea is what happens when the hot sugar hits the cold water tells you how you stuff will come out. if your sugar doesn't reach soft ball then its not going to harden and your pralines may sag like cookies or or fall apart into crumbly mush so it instantly tells you how the end product will be before you take it off the heat or commit all the ingredients to it. the old timers can tell this by just looking at it without a thermometer but rookies like me need a thermometer even though I am beginning to learn what it looks like when its ready.
soft ball is when the boiling sugar gets to between 234-240 degrees and is for fudge of pralines and such
hard ball is when the boiling sugar gets to between 250-266 degrees and is for things like hard candy and peanut brittle
they have stuff like thread stage, soft ball, firm ball, soft-crack, hard-crack, also but I cant say for sure what those are used for but I think taffy is the thread stage