12.26.09
Tempering Chocolates
The importance of tempering cannot be over-stressed because only if you do it would your chocolates become shiny and smooth since chocolates don’t possess these qualities by nature. Conching refines the cacao grains but tempering makes them undetectable.
Chocolates become creamy, smooth, shiny and firm and their shelf life improves because of tempering. If you temper chocolates, you have no reason to worry about blooming which turns chocolates flaky and granular and makes whitish-gray crystals appear on the face of the chocolates. You just can’t gift or sell such unappealing chocolates.
During tempering, chocolates melt at temperatures higher than 90F and hence lose the temper they come with from the manufacturers. You re-temper to return the shine and snap they lost.
Certain occasions (like an out-of-order tempering machine) may demand that you do tempering by hand and for these times, it’ll be best if have the knowledge of how to do it. There are two ways to temper manually.
France gave us the first method of tempering by hand, tabliering, which is otherwise called the marble-slab method since it is on this stone that you work the chocolate to cool it down.
You should maintain medium heat on the double boiler when you’re melting a pound of chocolate bars cut into thin strips so that you don’t scorch your base material. One-half of the molten chocolate is poured into a marble slab and worked upon till it flows thick and cooled to the proper temperature. After this, you can pour the other half also on the marble slab and both the portions are mixed together to the same temperature and consistency. You must ensure with a regularly calibrated thermometer that right tempering temperatures are maintained.
The second method, “seeding,” is almost the same except that “seeds” in the form of tempered chocolate is used as base for the unbounded crystals to model during crystallization. While melting, too, only three-fourths of the chocolate strips are used. Once melted, the remaining one-fourth of the chocolate strips that weren’t melted are worked into the chocolate melt and blended together till the entire mass melts and cools at the correct tempering temperature. You can’t deviate from the appropriate temperatures in the seeding method as well. Only after tempering can you start your work on chocolate design and presentation.
Tempering by hand is difficult, as acknowledged by even expert chocolate makers, since you’ll need to constantly make sure accurate temperatures are maintained. Even tiny deviations will lead to repeating tempering. Tempering needs your whole concentration and hence you may not be able to devote a lot of time on creative improvements in your chocolate making process.
When large quantities are planned for gifting and business needs, a tempering machine can only give you uniformly high-quality chocolates.
