North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

I’m guessing you’re not at altitude – there doesn’t seem to be much of that in KS…

 

Your jam should be done when it reaches 7 degrees above the boiling point of water – probably 219, but may vary with barometric pressure.  Regardless, see what the thermometer you’ll be using will register in boiling water, then add 7 degrees for your jam.  Visually, the jam should begin to hold its shape in a spoon. 

 

You may be using too much fruit, or too-ripe.  If it’s too ripe, you’ll need more pectin.  If it’s too much, you’ll need less fruit.  If you can find recipes that measure the fruit by weight rather than volume, that may help.  If you’re trying to perfect a recipe, weigh the fruit it calls for so you can make educated changes and create a reliable recipe.  It’s not unusual to want to vary even a successful recipe for your own conditions and taste.

 

If a closely followed recipe fails, you may want to try a different recipe, rather than try to alter that one.  Once you get a really good eye for what’s-gelled-to-what-point – and that’s different for jams vs. jellies – then you can vary things on your own with more confidence.  It can be more cost effective to vary small batches, so you can test your changes without a big investment of ingredients.

 

Ball pectin and recipes are very consistent and work for most people for most batches – but every home canner has his share of failures.  Terminology can be important though – a thin jam might be called a “delicious fruit topping” rather than a “failure.”  Likewise, there are canners who never know if they’re making syrup or jelly until it sets up…

 

Lately I’ve become appalled at the prices of ingredients like pectin (and baking yeast) and buy them in bulk.  Here’s where I get my pectin:  http://www.cattailcreekfarm.com/Baking%20Needs.htm

 

It’s a pretty forgiving pectin, and will work for freezer or regular jams; still, I notice differences as I vary recipes.  I’ve been doing very small batches using the jam setting for my bread machine.  I started with the jam recipes from Beth Hesperger’s The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook.  She uses the same machine I do, so the reliability of the recipes is excellent for me – as it is in general.  She likes her jams tarter and runnier than I do; it was a simple adjustment to increase the sugar and pectin, and safe to experiment with such small batches. 

 

~ Stephen

 

 

 

From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Mark & Helen Angermayer
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 11:00 AM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: [NAFEX] Pectin jell

 

This may be a question asked before, but was wondering what went wrong with our jam making?  Made a batch of peach jam and used 75% of the sugar that the recipe called for.  Used "Ball" brand pectin and followed all other instructions, which called for boiling the jam hard for one minute.  Then hot packed the jam.  Problem is, the jam didn't set up as firm as I thought it should.  Although the flavor is excellent, it's the consistency is thinner than I'd like.  About the consistancy of thick honey.  Thought maybe using less sugar caused it not to jell.  But then we made another batch of jam, this time with some strawberries left over in the freezer.  This time we used the full amount of sugar on the recipe.  Again the jam didn't firm up real good (although it's slightly firmer than the peach jam).

 

My question, what caused the jam not to jell well?  I know a lot of folks recommend Pomona's pectin, which is what I should have used, but we used what was available at the time.  Is Ball pectin a really bad product?  Would it have helped if we would have boiled the jam longer?

 

Mark

KS