Chocolate Tempering Machine Basics for the Newbie
Chocolates that are shiny, smooth and creamy will be a feast for anyone but these are the results of the tempering process to which they are subjected to. Tempering, which involves heating, cooling and reheating, also makes chocolates crisp. Melted chocolate is tempered in a proper manner by working upon it.
Other advantages of tempering are the shelf life of the chocolate is given a boost; blooming due to which whitish gray spots appear on the chocolate, is prevented. The dull and crumbly appearance and a dry taste are also averted.
Cocoa beans, from which chocolate is made, has many fatty acids that melt and solidify at different temperatures and tempering tames these fatty acids and make them crystallize uniformly.
Tempering by hand is a tedious process because of the strange behavior of the six crystals that are formed due to the re-crystallization of fatty acids of cocoa butter. These six crystals dominate at varied temperatures and this makes things difficult in tempering. This forces you to maintain specific temperatures during tempering.
Only type V crystals exhibit the behavior which makes the chocolates crisp, shiny and smooth. In other words, you do tempering for the sake of increasing the production of type V crystals so as to get your chocolates right.
But while maintaining precise temperatures during tempering, you should not allow even an incremental change in temperature because even this small slip may force repetition of the whole process again.
There are two ways of tempering by hand. The first is to melt the chocolate at a specific temperature on a cool surface and working upon it till tempering is done. The other is to use already tempered chocolate as “seed” for tempering a new batch, again at a temperature particular to the type of chocolate you’re using. But the specific temperatures you maintained during tempering should continue during the dipping and molding sessions that follow tempering.
Producing bulk chocolates should necessarily be done using a tempering machine in which hassles like maintaining specific temperatures, concern over moisture, etc. are not there. Tempering by machine produces more type V crystals resulting in the production of volume quantities of shiny, smooth and crispy chocolates. The processes of heating, cooling, reheating and maintaining specific temperatures are all done automatically with the help of computer chips.
Since you are left with a lot of time due to your using the chocolate tempering machine, you can devote it for devising innovative plans to expand your chocolate business.
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