How to Temper Chocolate
Doc.Choc’s step by step guide for making magic happen.
Marbling Method
Tempering chocolate on marble is the most classic of traditions. It is fast, effective, and introduces very little air into the chocolate - a tremendously beautiful side effect for moulding work.
Process.
Sanitise and completely dry a marble or granite work surface. If possible, prepare a landing pad for your container to catch the tempered chocolate as you move it from the bench.
Melt the entirety of your chocolate (to at least 46 degrees.)
Pour 3/4 of the chocolate onto the bench in one smooth motion.
Use a scraper to move the chocolate out into a rectangle of manageable size.
Allow the chocolate to sit for a moment. The contact with the marble is cooling the chocolate and bringing it into temperature range. - We are aiming for a finished temperature of 27 degrees before removing it from the bench.
After a 20 second pause, use your scraper to begin moving the outer chocolate into the centre of the mass, and re-spread. Cycle through this motion.
Time, temperature and movement. We are tempering. We are cooling. We are moving the chocolate, so that the crystals forming are spread evenly throughout the mass and begin to propagate at an even rate.The chocolate will begin to thicken. It is falling below 29 degrees.
Use a thermometer to check the temperature. Once we reach 27 degrees, that is 27.0 degrees, use your scraper to bring the chocolate into a centre mass and then drag it down to your landing pad. Use the pallete knife to clean the scraper.
Work with fluidity, work with vigour, and work with focus. Use a spatula to combine the cooled and still warm chocolate together. The finished temperature should be between 1-2 degrees less than your working temperature. Use a heat-gun to gently warm the final difference to the working temperature.
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If you are tempering chocolate without a machine, I would recommend marbling for its speed and accuracy. Honestly, once you learn the art of using the scraper and spatula in duo, it can’t be beaten.
Seeding Method
Sort of exactly but nothing like seeding a garden. Seeding works on the principle of using the thermal mass of liquid chocolate to melt some solid chocolate, releasing and seeding the pre-existing form 5 crystals throughout.
Process.
Calculate 80% of the total weight of chocolate you wish to temper. Melt this portion to above 46 degrees.
Weigh the remaining 20% of unmelted chocolate directly into the melted chocolate and use a spatula to aggressively but gracefully stir the two together, regularly scraping the sides of the container you are using, until the chocolate has melted and you are left with a container of liquid chocolate with no lumps.
Depending on the amount, this will take between 2 and 10 minutes.
Now stir aggressively means different things to different people. I want you to picture a kitchen aid mixer, you don’t want to exceed the rate of speed 4. (And yes to all those pastry chefs who just raised an eyebrow, if you are busy you can temper chocolate in a kitchen-aid; but honestly, just marble it.)
The chocolate will be around 29 degrees at this stage. It will be a little thicker than when you melted it. Continue stirring, but a little slower now, until it reaches 27.0 degrees.
Use a heat-gun to warm to your working temperature and voila.
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I used this process for almost the entirety of the time I had my first business; I’d never worked with marble, and it was comfortable for me. Truth be told, the day I poured chocolate onto marble was astonishingly life changing. The speed hooked me. The gracefulness of the movement. I doubt I will ever use the seed method unless a free bench can’t be arranged.
Silk Method
The new kid on the block. Cocoa silk isn’t a new idea; but its use in tempering chocolate is - it came to popularity sometime after 2015 when it was discovered you could essentially make it by rigging a rice cooker to a precise temperature. Okay, so that’s probably an oversimplified version.
Cocoa Silk is cocoa fat that has incubated at 33.5 degrees for 24 hours. At this temperature and time, form 5 crystals have propagated to such an extent that they dominate the structure. We can use this bounty of crystals to quickly influence the structure of mostly free chocolate.
Mostly free. Yes; we are going to work with chocolate that hasn’t been melted to that 46.0 degrees. A little scary, but its okay. The principle is that the sheer amount of form 5 crystals in the silk will dominate the structure so quickly when added to it, that the form 6 crystals will not be of significance.
Process
Melt your chocolate to 36.2 degrees.
Add 1% cocoa silk and stir with a spatula to combine.
Wait 3 minutes.
Stir again to confirm everything is as one.
Voila.
You will notice a higher working temperature, this is to compensate for the reduced fluidity as a result of other crystals being present.
Now that sounds easy; and it sort of is, which is why it is becoming a widely used technique for tempering. However access to precise incubators for cocoa fat is limited; and continuous tempering machines remain industry norm for large scale production.
Making your own silk
You can make your own cocoa silk. There are two go-to options.
Incubator. Set a purpose made incubator to 33.5 degrees, add your untempered, unmelted cocoa butter to it, and come back one day later.
Sous Vide. Set a water circulator to 33.5 degrees. Seal your untempered, unmelted cocoa butter inside of two vac pac bags. And circulate for 24 hours.
Silk is easiest used in its pomade style - at 33.5 degrees. However, if you are making your own with a sous vide, you might find it easier to let it set and microplane it into the chocolate.
Machine Method
Continuous tempering machines are the industry standard for large scale chocolate production. Heck, for small scale too! There is no lying about it - they make your job as a chocolatier tremendously efficient. A continuous tempering machine is just that - continuous.
It works on a three system approach.
Firstly, a melting tank. Here chocolate is continuously melted to a set temperature, and feeds out of a small opening at the bottom.
From here it enters a corkscrew which rotates vertically in a cooled shaft - where the chocolate comes down to a set temperature.
It is then warmed to your set working temperature and dispensed for use, or falls back into the tank and so the whole process starts again.
This is why they are brilliant, a unit of chocolate moving through a continuous tempering machine is not in temper the entire time, it is melted to its free state, tempered, deposited for use, or melted again. And so it never becomes over-crystallised.