Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis and today I'm going to be showing you how to mix a CMC gum solution.
When you buy CMC gum it usually comes in a powder, which as I have learned, is incredibly hard to add to your glazes. So an easier fix for this is to create a solution in water, and then add that solution to your glazes. CMC gum, basically what it does is it allows you to slow the drying of your glazes, increases brushability, and also creates a harder glaze when it's dry so that it adheres to the bisque better. There's lots of different reasons why you would want to do this. For me specifically, I've been brushing on my glazes, so it's very important to me that I am adding CMC gum to increase the brushability of my glazes.
So let's get started with showing you how to do this. The first thing we are going to do is zero out our scale. We are going to be measuring out this CMC gum powder. I'm making a liter of it. You can make however much you want. For one liter of water I'm going to be using 40 grams of powdered CMC gum solution. So I'm just going to measure out 40 grams here. We're not going to be adding this into the water because we are going to need to boil the water first.
Make you you have a somewhat... honestly the accuracy of your scale doesn't super matter. This doesn't have to be exact. There are varying opinions on how much to use per liter of water. Digital fire say 63 grams for one liter of water if you're using the Laguna CMC gum. I'm just using the generic, got it off the internet CMC gum that is food safe. I think most of it's food safe but this one was food grade. We are just going to go with 40 grams and we are going to feel it out. Once I get this 40 measured here we're going to switch over to the stove. There we go, 40. I said it didn't have to be exact, but I'm exacting sometimes.
We are going to switch over to the stove. Generic stove, generic pot. Just going to pour our 1 liter of water into the pot. It's just like making macaroni except we are measuring the water. Turn it on high and then forget about it, because a watched pot never boils.
When we come back and the water is crazy boiling. That's good, that's what we were trying to do. Now we are going to turn off the stove. Don't put the stuff in there yet. Turn off the stove, remove the pan from the heat. Come over here, and we are going to add the powder into the water that was just boiling that we just took off the stove. Then we are going to whisk it, and whisk it, and whisk it, and whisk it. And honestly it took forever to whisk it all around to get it all whisked in, even at boiling temperatures. I probably should have used my immersion blender, but I forgot. I think I kind of remembered, but I didn't want to damage the non-stick sides of my pan with my immersion blender so I just went for it with my rubber coated safe mixer. But eventually I got it all mixed up.
Once it was all mixed up, I took the whisk out. This stuff is really really thick and sticky. Once the solution has been mixed it's really thick and sticky. I'm pouring my solution into a peanut butter jar. A nice recycled peanut butter jar with a label. This CMC gum solution does expire. I'm not exactly sure how long it's good for. When it starts to grow mold I guess I will just make some more. The powder came with an expiration date, but I'm not sure if the expiration date once it has liquid added to it is going to change.
I'm using a spatula to get it all in there. I'm making a tiny little mess and trying not to make a mess. It's very sticky. That's kind of it's whole thing. I'm going to wipe off anything that got on the outside because I don't want to have sticky on everything, everywhere all the time. Going to keep it tidy. Once I get the rim cleaned up I'm going to put the lid on and walk it over here to my glaze area so I can add some of this to my glaze.
I've got my solution, I've got a glaze, I've got my immersion blender. I've got this tiny little, uh, I forgot what these are called, but this thing. It's like 2mL. I've got 100mL, or something like that of glaze here, I think it might be 500mL. Regardless, however much I added here was not enough, but it's easier to add more than to take it away. I'm going to put a link down to DigitalFire. How much you need to add to your glaze really depends on what you're doing. I'm just going to be taking up slowly. One little bit at a time until I feel like I have enough in it and it's at a consistency where I'm comfortable with it. I'm going to be brushing my glazes, that's the main reason for doing this.
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