Tempering Chocolate

Tempering chocolate…

Once we have bulk chocolate from all the other steps, we can temper it. What is “tempering”? It’s a temperature process (meaning we go down and up and down in the temperature of the chocolate) to get the right crystal structure in place, and ultimately the shiny, snappy chocolate bars. Once chocolate is “in temper” then we can mold it. A tempered chocolate bar will have a nice snap when broken and have a shine to it. (Milk and white chocolate are harder to get the snap because of all the other ingredients. So, I am mostly referring to dark chocolate. And I am referring to dark chocolate as anything over 50% cocoa nibs. Many chocolate producers will count cocoa butter as part of the percent of cocoa, so, unless you can determine exactly how much of the bar is actually cocoa nibs, it’s really hard to tell.

Sometimes it’s nice to know what chocolate is not in temper. You can see “blooming” in chocolate not in temper. Or you can see a white, chalky film on it. This doesn’t necessarily mean the chocolate is bad. It might just be out of temper. If chocolate gets too hot or cold, it will go out of temper. Chocolate out of temper can have a chalky taste too. This means the cocoa butter is separating from the fiber. There is roughly 50% cocoa butter in a cocoa bean. So, the separation can happen in chocolate bars with no added cocoa butter.

We recommend chocolate stay between 55-75 degrees F. to keep chocolate in temper.

Tempering: We take the chocolate down to 80 degrees F, then up to 125 degrees F, and then back down to 92.5 degrees F. Sometimes each single origin chocolate has slightly different temperatures for tempering. So, once you’ve got it right for one chocolate, it can be off for another chocolate.

We have noticed ambient temperature also plays a role in tempering chocolate. If it’s colder out, then the temperatures need to go up 2 degrees. If it’s warmer, then temps can be 2-3 degrees cooler.