Learning Objective: Tempering advice from a working chocolatier's perspective


Tales From the Frontlines: The Tempering Dance

by Rachel Sawatzky, CocoaNymph

Welcome to the world of the chocolate tempering dance! I’m here to tell you about tempering from my experience, in hopes of making it a little more clear for you.

Prior to taking the Ecole Chocolat Course, I began tempering with the help of a recipe book. I was confused. I would melt the chocolate to the right temperature in the mocrowave or over a bain marie, let the bowl of chocolate sit on the counter to cool to the right temperature and then, when I dipped my chocolates, they would be streaky with bloom.

It was this frustration that led me to Ecole Chocolat, where I learned that movement is necessary for proper crystal formation, in addition to the proper temperature curve.

I’ve been successfully tempering and teaching tempering to my staff and interns for almost 10 years now, and I have some helpful tips to share with you as you begin learning this new skill.

Tempering can be summarized as the process by which cocoa butter crystals are brought into order. If you let chocolate cool without proper attention, the crystals will cool haphazardly and your chocolate will not have the proper appearance or texture.

  1. Tempering is a function of three things: temperature, movement, and time. None of these aspects of tempering is more important than the others and without attention to all three your temper won’t come out right. Temperature isn’t the only thing that matters. While cocoa butter crystals can only exist in the V-form at a certain temperature range, being in that range doesn’t guarantee their presence – you have to put them there. A thermometer is a great tool to know if you are close, but it won’t guarantee temper. You need timing and movement as well to form the right crystals.
  2. Room temperature matters. Your room ideally needs to be around 68°F (20°C).  At my shop we find that 69°F is a good working temperature for our climate, but any hotter and we have trouble getting our chocolate to set. Use climate control or work at cool times of the day. Creating the right room temperature and humidity is a fact of life in chocolate work so you need to deal with that.
  3. Practice practice practice! Tempering is a skill, and it's necessary to develop it through practice. If you ever learned to play a musical instrument, you likely spent hours learning scales. Tempering is the scales practice of chocolate work. It takes repetition and practice. Review the techniques lectures several times and practice! You likely won’t get it right on the first try – this is normal!
  4. Test, test and test again. Cut a whole bunch of slips of parchment paper, about 1 inch by 2 inches. Put them in a bowl near where you work, and as we mention in the tempering assignment, use them to take tests of your melted chocolate as you go through the tempering process. Properly tempered dark chocolate in a room at the right temperature will start to set within three minutes with no streaks or spots. It won’t yet have a snap, but if it is starting to set and looks smooth and shiny, it is a good test.
  5. You won’t know what the right test looks like unless you have a bunch of wrong ones to compare it to – so take tests throughout the process. This will help you later to identify if your chocolate is too hot or too cold just by its appearance. If you only dip one side of your parchment slip in the chocolate and keep it clean, all of your tests can be removed from the slips and remelted later. Don't be stingy with your tests.

Good luck!

 

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