A Look into the Chemistry of Chocolate Tempering
You have to use pure chocolate when making chocolate candy confectioneries to make sure that you will only produce the best quality of chocolates. Once you use pure chocolates, you have to temper to get the best features of chocolates like glossiness and crispness. Tempering also provides a smooth texture to your chocolate and can make it last without melting for a very long time.
Chocolate confectioneries that did not experience tempering will have unattractive qualities; it’ll be flaky, crumbly and dull. Un-tempered chocolate is also prone to blooming, those whitish blotches on top of chocolate faces.
Chocolates undergo tempering for the basic reason that it contains cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is the primary component of real and pure chocolates. Cocoa butter contains fatty acids that, during crystallization, can morph into six different crystal shapes when there are temperature variances in chocolate. Proper tempering will be able to make the necessary type of crystals to appear. Dark chocolate, white chocolate and milk chocolate contain cocoa butter that needs to be tempered to be of the best quality.
The particles in cocoa butter need to form the type V crystalline structures via bonding. The type of crystals that will form will greatly rely on the chocolate temperature that is provided by the chocolatier.
Chocolate, like other substances, could melt and freeze at specific temperatures. Freezing is the stage where the molecules become solid and the process is directed by temperature. Water, for instance will melt or turn to liquid at a temperature of 32F. When you try to drop down the temperature, crystals will begin to shape quickly so that when it reaches the 0F mark, water is already in its solid stage.
We can then say that when temperature moves to the freezing stage, the molecules begin to bond together and create crystals. These crystals will then begin to crowd the space that was previously occupied by the liquid as temperature dives, turning the substance solid. The stability of the solid will greatly relay on the consistency and uniformity of the created crystals.
All in all, this is what happens during chocolate crystallization. When it’s solid, the crystals attach and a perfectly tempered chocolate is so steady and firm that only a greater energy can disfigure its shape. When tempering is done properly it will keep its stability in an ordinary room temperature of about 77F. When you try to increase temperatures, chocolate will start to melt; 96F is usually the point where chocolate begins softening. The crystal bonds will disappear at 98F so tempering is necessary to form the crystals again.
Right chocolate temperatures are very important in the tempering process. In order to make sure that you’ll only have accurate temperatures on chocolates while working, a Mercury-Gauge Chocolate Thermometer will help. This thermometer is designed especially for chocolate tempering purposes.
