What is Tempering Chocolate?
Chocolatiers are obsessed with tempering chocolate. Ever wondered why?
It doesn’t have to be this scary phenomenon clouded in secrecy and confusion. It’s really just a process that we must follow before working with chocolate. Read on below for Doc.Choc’s thoughts, and a step by step guide on getting your chocolate to set shiny, and snap with that crisp click.
What is tempering?
I think its easiest to explain this with the help of an analogy.
Picture a room with six different chairs in it. That room is our chocolate. And the six chairs are the different ways that the cocoa fat inside chocolate can look and act. We’re going to call these different ways forms. Cocoa fat can be present in six different forms; like our six different chairs.
We want to use the room; but we want to have only one particular chair in it, so we must re-organise it. Since there’s a bit of chaos going on, we decide to take all of the chairs out first. For our chocolate, this means melting it.
We want to bring one particular chair back in to sit on while we work, but unfortunately to get to the one that we want we need to bring along another one that we stacked on top during our clean out. This happens when we cool chocolate down to 27 degrees. We bring about forms 4 and 5.
Now we’ve got some space, we can take out that last chair. In tempering, this is warming chocolate back up to the working temperature, where only form 5 is present. Once we warm above 29 degrees, form 4 melts away. Hey, one chair left! This is called the tempering curve, where we start with a solid, melt it to a free liquid, cool it, then warm it slightly to a working temperature (which we will discuss in a little bit.)
The rules of Tempering Chocolate
Unlike fight club, the rules of tempering chocolate should regularly be discussed, argued for, and followed rigorously. The thing to remember when working with any chocolate; is that a tremendous deal of energy, effort, love, and bloody hard work have gone in to getting it in-front of you to use. So respect that, because anything less than your full attention is a complete discourtesy to the cocoa industry.
Chocolate should be tempered in a room that is between 20 and 22 degrees. With a relative humidity between 40 and 60 percent. This is the ideal state, conditions either side are possible, but require changes to standard practices, introducing risk, and most often result in chocolate that is poorly tempered and difficult to work with.
Time, Temperature and Movement are the fundamentals to the tempering process.
You must always respect passing through each temperature gateway whilst tempering chocolate. Pay attention to your chocolate and what it is telling you, moving too fast or too slow will upset the crystal formation.
Once you have tempered your chocolate, work methodically and with vigour to complete your tasks. Aim to keep a batch of chocolate in temper, in an ideal working environment, for no more than 1 hour.
What Temperature to Melt Chocolate to?
Earlier I said our melting temperature was above 46 degrees. But how far? It is important to take chocolate to a high enough temperature where all crystals melt to their free state. I recommend holding chocolate at the following temperatures for 5 minutes before starting to cool it.
Dark, 52 Degrees Celsius
Milk, 49 Degrees Celsius
White, 46 Degrees Celsius
What Temperature do you work with Chocolate at?
Different chocolates have different working temperatures, that is, the temperature we use them at once tempered. This temperature rises with the increase in cocoa fat within the chocolate.
White Chocolate has the least cocoa fat, and has a working temperature of 27-28 degrees.
Milk Chocolate slightly more, and so 29-30 degrees.
Dark Chocolate is 30-32 degrees.
A range is given, because working conditions vary. If your room is warmer, or you want to produce slightly thicker shells, it might be easier to run at the low end of the working temperature.
The key thing to remember is 0.5 degrees above our working temperature will cause damage to our crystal structure forcing us to undergo a re-temper.