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Tempering by hand compared to chocolate tempering machines

Monday, December 28th, 2009

You won’t be able to concentrate on your work when shiny, smooth, and creamy chocolates are around. But these attributes are conferred on chocolates only by the process of tempering, done serially in three stages: heating, cooling and reheating. But it is essential to maintain specific temperatures constantly and accurately while tempering.

If only for the maintaining temperatures accurate aspect is tempering construed as an intricate procedure that even master chocolatiers may balk at doing it, simply because of several reasons:

  • The difficulty of tempering by hand is due to the complexity created when the fatty acids of the cocoa butter crystallize into six varied forms.
  • These separate crystal forms make the job even more difficult as they become dominant also at six different temperatures.
  • The object is to maintain only a specific temperature so that the formation of type V crystals alone is encouraged. Chocolates become crisp and snappy only due to type V crystals and so your aim’s to create only the type V crystals.
  • Even a small lapse in tempering temperatures can lead to fewer quantity of type V crystals formed.
  • Tabliering and seeding are the two methods with which you can temper chocolates by hand. You must maintain accurate temperatures whatever technique you choose to employ when tempering by hand. Even tiny changes in temperature can cause you to repeat it till you temper the chocolates perfectly.
  • Additionally, moisture should be guarded against and an accurate thermometer must be made use of for monitoring temperatures.

If you want to create only the type V crystals during tempering, by all means invest in a chocolate tempering machine, not only for large-volume productions but especially to achieve a uniform quality in your products.

A microprocessor in the tempering machine handles temperature-control as well as keeps chocolates perfectly tempered for hours. A lot of time is saved and you’re free of the hassles of manually tempering your confections. You can deploy this free time and energy towards innovating on methods and improving on business strategies.

Although you can’t afford to not know how to temper by hand because you may be forced to do it on certain occasions, it’s only when you have a tempering machine can you craft chocolates in large quantities and with uniform quality as well as deliver them to your public at the right time.

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Tempering Chocolates Basic

Friday, November 13th, 2009
If you’re determined to get your chocolates right, you’ll definitely temper them. Though the task is quite a difficult one, your chocolates will become smooth and shiny, will not be coarse when you take a bite, and whitish-gray blotches will not appear on their surface to make them unattractive.
Tempering chocolates isn’t a step that should be missed because chocolates don’t possess smoothness and shine on their own. Though the chocolate making process includes conching to make the particles smooth, only if you do tempering do you prevent the formation of large crystals. Your goal is to enjoy your chocolate, which isn’t possible when you allow the crystals in cocoa butter to show.
Only from chocolate liquor would you get cocoa butter, the basic component in chocolates. Cocoa liquor is the paste you get by grinding roasted cocoa beans, which itself contains more than 53% of cocoa butter. It’s cocoa butter that gives chocolates its rich and creamy texture. Without chocolate tempering, white spots get produced when the cocoa butter fragments; the crystals rise to the surface of the chocolates and become visible to the eye. This is what’s referred to as blooming.
The six kinds of fatty acids in cocoa butter have separate, specific temperatures when they crystallize and this is what makes tempering complex. When the chocolate melts, the fat crystals in cocoa butter disperse. Tempering alone can re-bond them to avoid blooming, a matted appearance and a crumbly grain.
There are three ways to temper chocolates:
1. Tabliering, or the artisan’s method, is complicated and involves melting the chocolate at a high of 90F. A third of the molten chocolate is worked on a marble slab, slowly stirring in the remaining chocolate. The whole mass is then worked to bring to the same temperature.
2. “Seeding” is an easier method in which already-tempered chocolate is used as seed so that the uniform crystallization of the free-moving crystals is triggered. You start the process just similar to tabliering by melting two-thirds of the chocolate. The remaining one-third is cut into small strips and then are used to “inoculate” the melted chocolate. Just as in tabliering, you have to maintain specific temperatures in seeding too.
3. To become an expert chocolate maker, you’ll need to concentrate more on perfecting this craft but most of your time and efforts are taken by the difficult task of tempering. If you use a chocolate tempering machine, the third painless way to temper chocolates, you can focus more on developing your chocolate making skills.

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