why tempering really does matter
and a video + recipe for a two chocolate jam-swirled inclusioncrafted bar based on a childhood food memory
Hello makers and chocolate folks,
I’m starting this week’s post with a PSA about tempering, because in the small amount of time I spend on Instagram these days, I keep coming across an uptick in photos of untempered bars. By untempered, I mean sugar-bloomed, and bars with obvious swirls of fat bloom. And by photos, I mean folks displaying their bars as if all is okay.
A friendly reminder of why tempering matters
If our bars aren’t in temper they will
look weird to the folks who buy them
will not melt on the tongue evenly, required for dispersing the flavor in the expected “I’m tasting chocolate experience” when a bite is taken
the texture can be chalky
and the bar can become crumbly
Here’s why
Cocoa butter is polymorphic (wait! I promise this isn’t too science-y!) which means it is capable of forming more than one type of crystal. Our BFF is the crystal form called Type 5 (not that it actually matters what it’s called), which is a super-bossy crystal that prefers a specific temperature range to form. Actually, all crystals are temperature-specific: They do their thing and form at a >certain temperature<
What we need to know as chocolate makers is that tempering, however we do it—hand-tempering, seed tempering, or machine tempering—is accomplished by creating the environment (temperature + enough time) that our BFF crystal needs in order to lock our lovely suspension (aka, chocolate) into sublime uniformity.
If we don’t temper correctly, there can and will be other rogue crystals that sneak in, and disrupt the uniformity we need. It’s not just about shine and snap; these are gifts (true side benefits) the Cacao Goddess bestowed to Type 5 crystals.
What do I mean by sneaking in? Crystals, in particular cocoa butter crystals, can migrate and change form. If you’ve ever unwrapped a block of stored untempered chocolate, you’ve seen the results.
If our bars are tempered (in temper), they will be shiny or a matte gloss, and have no bloom swirls or teensy powdery-looking white speckles (these powdery speckles indicate sugar bloom, which can often be rubbed off; this does not make the bars in temper, though).
The rule of thumb: if in doubt, throw it back into the melter and start over.
What went wrong every time our bars don’t temepr is temperature and/or time.
Some of you might argue “what about humidity?” but humidity is only an issue when our temperature and time aren’t correct.
Others might say, what about a cocoa butter disruptor, like coconut or nut and seed oils?
In both questions if our temperature and time are spot on, the chocolate will temper.
The bars on the left: far left side is tempered okay, right bar is bloomed. Bars on the right: have widespread bloom.
Why we shouldn’t package and sell or ship bloomed bars
Because untempered chocolate is unstable, meaning, as more time passes the bloom will spread or worsen. There is tempered or not; just like pregnancy, a person either is are they are not. If we hope “no one will notice” we’d still be selling untempered chocolate, which has appearance issues, but notably, texture and taste issues.
When chocolate isn’t in temper the solid particles are no longer in that uniform suspension we’ve worked to lock in place via tempering; that’s really what tempering does for us, keeping all the teensy, imperceptible solid particles adrift in the cocoa fat even at room temperature. Especially at room temperature! because that’s how a chocolate bar leaves our hands.
Let’s put that tempering know-how into play with a two-chocolate inclusion bar. Besides needing to keep two batches in temper at the same time, one that we’re tempering has a cocoa butter crystal disrupter (it has nuts refined into the batch), but seed tempering makes this a snap (literally!)
If you need a bit of a tempering re-cap:
For paid subscribers, keep reading below for the video and the pdf how-to sheets.