How to temper chocolate the way artisans do
Chocolates don’t have the attractive qualities of shine, smoothness and snap on their own and to make them so, you need to do tempering. With conching, the particles of chocolates become fine but if you temper them, you can make them even finer.
Tempering also makes chocolate creamy as well as increases its shelf life. Blooming is also kept under check. Blooming is that phenomenon that spoils the appearance of chocolates by making them grainy. At the same time, whitish streaks appear on the face of the chocolates making them even more unattractive. Selling such unappetizing chocolates would indeed be a daunting task.
Chocolates come tempered straight from the chocolate makers. During melting, since temperatures above 90F are used, chocolates lose such temper and to make them appetizing after dipping and molding them, you’ll need to re-temper.
There will be moments when necessity will dictate that you’ll need to temper by hand, hence it’ll be an advantage if you can manually temper your chocolates the way artisanal chocolatiers do.
Tempering by hand can be done in two ways: through tabliering and seeding. Tabliering is an innovation from the French and is otherwise called marble-slab method since a cold stone surface, like a marble slab, is used to cool down the chocolate. In tabliering, a pound of chocolate is melted at medium heat, taking care not to burn it by stirring it. Then you gently bring down the temperature by working the first half of the melted chocolate with a rubber spatula on a marble slab. The other half is later mixed in, just as gently, until the whole thing has cooled and thickened.
In the “seeding” method, the seed used is nothing but one-fourth of the chocolate that’s going to be melted. The three-fourths of a pound of chocolate is melted then poured into a bowl; you start mixing the melted chocolates and the non-melted bits until you’ve achieved a thickened consistency.
In both tabliering and seeding, it’s important to remember to keep chocolate temperatures at their proper levels at all times. Only when tempering is done can you dip your fruits and other fillings or mold the chocolate melt in interestingly-shaped molds.
Remember that even a small change in holding temperatures can force you to do tempering again and this is a difficulty that even experienced chocolate makers can face. You may find that you’re time is split between maintaining ideal tempers and crafting confections while working; something that may influence your creativity.
For gifting and commercial purposes, you must have consistently good quality chocolates so as not to throw off your public. A chocolate tempering machine will be right handy for increased but same-standard yields every time you make chocolate candies.
