Why Chocolate Tempering is Crucial to Your Business
Chocolates do not get their fine qualities (luster, rich texture, long shelf life, and snap) from the seed. These qualities are acquired through a process called tempering, a sequential procedure of melting and cooling and maintaining temperatures absolute.
Besides imparting these qualities, tempering also precludes blooming from happening–a predilection of cocoa butter crystals to rise to the surface of chocolates and become white streaks when tempering is left undirected.
A serious chocolatier will take the time to temper chocolates again because, although chocolates from the manufacturers are already tempered, chocolate loses its temper again when it’s subjected to heating to make it ready for dipping and molding.
The reason for the need to re-temper is the fact that chocolate has cocoa butter and cocoa butter can have six different crystal structures at any one time, especially when tempering is not managed well. The Type V crystals that are behind the fine chocolate characteristics multiply only at a certain temperature and to keep them coming, you’ll have to keep this temperature level even when you’re already working on your chocolate candy.
It’s a fact that temperature–and your ability to keep them maintained–is what makes tempering viable. Get distracted and the temperature may change, and any degree variation will cause chocolate to distemper. In which case, you’ll temper again. And again, if necessary.
Especially if you’ve chosen to temper chocolates by seeding or tabliering, then you’ll need to be extra watchful of temperatures. (Tabliering involves gently cooling the chocolate liquid on a heat-drawing top, and seeding leads loose crystals in the molten chocolate to “photocopy” the Type V crystal bonding in the “seed” chocolate.)
It bears repeating again: invariable tempering temperatures preclude chocolates from distemper. And what makes this goal easily achieved is a chocolate tempering machine which, at the click of a button, you can load chocolates, keep them tempered, and forget you’re ever tempering at all.
Manually tempering chocolate is so vulnerable to such outside factors as humidity, skill, equipment, and attention that you’d want to automate everything and be done with the intricacies and manual labor. This is actually what a chocolate tempering machine will do, with the availability of a software technology that computerizes the tempering cycle for your convenience.
Investing in a tempering machine is a no-brainer, especially when the rewards are most desirable: higher profits, better quality chocolate confectioneries, more markets served, and time to focus on improving cost and profit margins.
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