Tempering Woes

Worked with white chocolate some yesterday.  It's much different than dark and milk.  It's easy to chop, but  extremely thick when melted.  This made enrobing very difficult.  It felt like throwing a piece of ganache at churning cement.  We weren't able to get many done because we lost temper.

I'm not going to try to put the definition of tempering into my own words.  I'll be borrowing a lot of my explanations and definitions from Andrew Garrison Shotts book Making Artisan Chocolates: Flavor Infused Chocolates, Truffles, and Confections.  He does a much better job than I would anyhow.

So what's the difference between tempered and untempered chocolate?

Well...

"Tempered chocolate sets quickly at room temperature, hardens as it dries, is shiny and brittle, shrinks slightly as it sets (and therefore releases easily from a mold), has a smooth mouth-feel, and, once set, holds its luster and shape at room temperature for extended amounts of time without melting.  However, once reheated past a certain temperature, the chocolate will melt, and at that point it is no longer tempered.  Untempered chocoalte dries very slowly at room temperature, is tacky to the touch, sticks to the inside of a mold, has a cakey texture when eaten, and usually has a blotchy appearance."

And, how do you do it?

"Tempering is the process of of melting chocolate, cooling it down, and heating it up again slightly.  Basically, it is raising and lowering the temperature of melted chocolate so that the fat crystals in the cocoa butter stabilize.  That's a simplified scientific explanation.  The practical one is that you are simply adjusting the characteristics of the melted chocolate so that it sets up with a nice glossy shine, doesn't melt in your hands upon contact, has a pleasing texture when eaten, and melts nicely on your tongue."

At SCR we use a tempering machine, which does most of the work for you - except our humidity in house is out of whack and the machine is temperamental (pun intended).

We worked on tempering by hand.  Which involved standing by the microwave and testing the temperature every minute, then cooling it down, and finally microwaving it again to the correct temperature.

The three levels of temperature varies by chocolate and it takes a lot of practice to understand what is best for the chocolate you are using.