How Chocolate got its Shine and snap: The Tempering Process
There are alot of things that go into creating a good chocolate bar. One of the most interesting and complex parts of the process is called tempering.
The most simple way to understand tempering is through the concept of a building’s frame. In order for a structure to be durable, strong and stable it requires all the beams to be straight, and for the cross beams to be placed appropriately. If the beams are crooked, and if bracing is missing the building will eventually begin to fall apart. The same concept goes for a chocolate bar.
The structure in a bar of chocolate is provided by the fats contained in the cacao bean, the cacao butter. These fats contain 6 different kinds of crystalline structures. Of the 6, four of them are like our shaky building. These lack structure, and result in the bar starting to separate and lose its shape, texture and flavor. These poor structures also have significantly lower melting point, making them turn to liquid in your hands or when exposed to only minor changes in temperature.
Most of us have seen the results. A chocolate bar melts and resolidifies. Suddenly it becomes marbely. This is when the structure collapses and the fats of the cacao butter and the other solids separate from each other. The resulting texture is chalky or waxy and the flavor is noticeably different.
So how do we ensure that the fats have formed nice, orderly crystals and that they remain in that state? Through a process of heating, colling and slight reheating.
When you heat liquid chocolate to a certain degree, you break down all of the crystalline structures. You have create a blank slate to build from. This is where it gets cool.
You actually can add a little bit of tempered chocolate into your liquid chocolate. If you keep it moving, that structured crystal actually attracts more of the fats into the same structure. The structure begins to grow into your liquid chocolate. The only problem is that despite how much you add and how much you cool it down, one of those pesky bad structures likes to stick around. You have to then raise the temperature just a bit in order to get the last but of that out. All you are left with is the desirable ‘type V’ crystal. Do it right, pour it into molds and ensure you have an even cocoolinglling into solid chocolate and you are good to go!
There is one even harder and stronger structure chocolate can take. This happens naturally over time as the finished bar ‘cures’ over a few weeks. If you ever have the chance to eat fresh tempered chocolate vs chocolate a few weeks old you can taste the difference. New tempered chocolate is softer when you bite into it and has a mellow ‘snap’ when you break it. Cured chocolate has a more crisp snap and extra hardness upon the first few bites.
Well tempered chocolate acts like the walls of a home, keeping everything safe and secure on the inside. In fact, when making superfood chocolate like Mandala Chocolate this structure does more than keep things from separating. It acts as a seal for all the nutrients, preventing them from being exposed to oxygen or any degradation. It acts as a perfect suspension system for all of those nutrients. This is extra important in the case of Mandala Chocolate where we break those nutrients down into their most bioavailable forms, making them more susceptible to degradation over time. The tempering prevents this and keeps everything fresh for up to a few years.
Hopefully this sheds a little light into the process of tempering chocolate. We discuss how to temper chocolate at home in another article.
