2.1 What is tempering? How can I temper chocolate at home?
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This article is from the Chocolate FAQ, by Monee Kidd faq@choco.com with numerous contributions by others.
2.1 What is tempering? How can I temper chocolate at home?
In order for chocolate to cool into a hard candy and not a mushy goo,
it must be tempered. This is a process where the chocolate is slowly
heated, then slowly cooled, allowing the cocoa butter molecules to solidify
in an orderly fashion. The following is a pretty thorough method for
tempering at home: (credit to Pete Lockhart, pete@teleport.com)
Frankly, I've had decent luck with microwave ovens for melting the
chocolate. It's an iterative process of nuking, stirring, nuking,
stirring, etc. But I like the idea that the chocolate is not getting
steamed as it is with a double boiler. You might try 15 seconds increments
on high for a pound of chocolate. Keep an eye on the time as the chocolate
gets into its melt; you may want to ramp it down some what.
However, for either nuking or using a double boiler, it's not a bad idea
to break up the chocolate into little pieces. For a double boiler be
careful not to have the water boiling or touching the bottom of the upper
vessel. It sounds from your description like you might have the heat
cranked up too much, even given convection from the bottom vessel to the
top. Be patient. Dark chocolate can be taken up to about 115 degrees F
and milk chocolate can be taken up to 110 degrees F.
Once you've gotten a complete melt, letting the chocolate cool slowly while
stirring it or working it will encourage the cocoa butter to arrange itself
in a way that is particularly useful for making candy. This is 'tempering'
the chocolate.
Turns out that cocoa butter molecules can arrange themselves in a variety
of ways [six that I know of] and it is these different arrangements that
determine the melting temperature of the chocolate. The respective
melting temperatures range from about 60 degrees F to about 97 degrees F.
The one you're looking to get is the most stable form, and has a melting
temperature of 93 - 95 degrees F. Which is good, because it means that
your chocolate will tend to be that way, as long as you're patient. It
also means that the chocolate is going to feel delightfully cooling in
your mouth.
So, you've taken your chocolate up to 110 -115 degrees, and that has had
the effect of breaking up [melting] all of the cocoa butter molecules.
Now you want them to arrange themselves in a stable arrangement; but you
also want to manipulate the chocolate now that it is a liquid.
There are a couple of strategies for encouraging the cocoa butter into
its stable arrangement. As mentioned above, stirring it or working it
with a spatula will tend to bring about the proper 'crystallization' of
the cocoa butter molecules. Another technique is to 'seed' the molten
chocolate by putting in little pieces of solid chocolate. The molten
cocoa butter then will do a kind of follow-the-leader and arrange itself
after the fashion of the solids. Which is what you want. The hazard
with seeding your chocolate is that you might get little air pockets
associated with the solid pieces. I tend to just stir the chocolate.
Traditionally, small batch chocolate is tempered on marble slabs. Just
pour it on and work it with a spatula until it becomes kind of
slushy-mushy. I don't use a marble slab, I use a bowl that I can pop
back into the microwave if I need to.
The next tricky step is to maintain enough heat to keep the chocolate
molten, but not heat it up so much that it forgets how to arrange itself.
This is where the 85 - 90 degrees F comes in. [I think the heating pad
idea sounds cool]. The marble slab will retain some of the heat. Be
careful about using the same vessel in which you heated the chocolate.
I know it's convenient, and that's what I do, you just gotta be more
careful about over heating the chocolate.
Overheating the chocolate will make the cocoa butter separate from the
cocoa solids, and that's a bad thing. Indication that you're overheating
the chocolate is either chocolate bloom in the hardened chocolate or out
and out separation of cocoa butter in the chocolate soup.
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