Why You Should Know About the Tempering Process
If you’re one of those chocolate lovers out there who has probably had tasted a lot of the good and bad chocolates out there, you probably know how to look for the one with the finest quality. You also probably know that chocolates with crumbs and those with whitish-gray spots on its surface haven’t gone through the process of proper tempering.
Chocolate with the finest quality are characterized by shiny and smooth texture, it is neither crumbly nor flaky. If you try to split in pieces, it will not produce any crumbs; it will just snap and will melt in your mouth. Chocolatiers temper their chocolate to get that features that only the finest quality chocolate could have.
Cocoa butter is what makes the chocolate rich and real, and it’s also the reason behind the need to temper chocolates. Cocoa butter have its own unique way of crystallization process, the fatty acids in the cocoa butter, during the cool down process right after melting can form six different crystals and what kind of crystal that does form is dictated by chocolate temperatures.
It is very important that you keep a watchful eye on its temperature because sudden change in the temperature may produce unnecessary types of crystals which can impair the whole chocolate. Crystals are identified from Type I to Type VI, and the one responsible for the creaminess and glossiness of the chocolate is the Type V crystals. Ergo, you have to control temperatures during chocolate tempering, to make sure that you get only as much Type V crystals as possible.
What makes temperature control necessary is the fact that tempering by hand, done through tabliering or seeding, is quite vulnerable to inconsistencies in final output qualities. Manual tempering is also exposed to such external factors as humidity, chocolatier skill, and thermometer integrity besides temperature levels so you’re never certain from one production to the next if your efforts will yield the same quality of products as the preceding ones.
To eliminate such unpredictability in product quality, you can use chocolate tempering machines which would automate the tempering process as well as ensure that each production time you’ll be producing the same quality chocolate confectioneries. Each tempering machine comes equipped with a computer chip that directs the melting-cooling-re-heating paces of tempering as well as sustain temperatures evenly throughout. Such automation translates not only to consistent quality products but also to more time concentrating on dipping and molding rather than multitasking between watching temperatures and creative design.
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