Tempering by hand as against automated tempering
Once you begin eating one chocolate, you may want to have one more and this may go on and on, because it’s so tempting with its creamy sweetness, shine and snap. But this shine and snap are not chocolate’s natural qualities and are obtained only by a process called tempering. Tempering has three steps in it: heating, cooling and reheating.
The process of tempering becomes less than straightforward because of the fact that it involves accurately keeping specific temperatures the whole time, as experienced chocolatiers and beginners attest to:
- The fatty acids contained in cocoa butter, the main ingredient of chocolates, form into six types of crystals.
- These six crystal formations tend to multiply at six various temperatures when you do tempering.
- Type V crystals that are one among these crystals make the chocolates crisp and shiny and the other types of crystals, if allowed to dominate at their own temperatures, come in the way of production of type V crystals.
- Therefore, to achieve the most wanted shine and snap, the temperature at which type V crystals are formed must be upheld perfectly.
- Manual tempering is done via tabliering and seeding. In both these methods, specific and accurate temperatures are necessary; otherwise, tempering may have to be done again and again.
- Other factors that may spoil tempering by hand are moisture in the surroundings and in the utensils used for tempering as well as using an imprecise thermometer, among others.
Large quantities can be tempered only by using a tempering machine because with one you’ll have a uniform good quality in the entire output. It is a microprocessor on the tempering machine that does the job of maintains correct temperatures during heating, cooling and reheating. If you use a tempering machine, the chocolates can also remain tempered for an extended duration. You are left with a lot of free time that can be used constructively for improving the quality of your chocolates for improved branding and profit margins.
Learning tempering by hand is also a must in a chocolate confections business because there may be occasions that may demand it. But investing in a tempering machine is also a must-do as you can make consistently good quality chocolates for sticking to the time-schedules imposed by the buyers.
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