Tempering

For most chocolate work, couverture will not handle properly if simply melted. It will take too long to set, and when it does set, it will not have the desired shine or the proper texture. The process of preparing couverture for dipping, coating, molding, and other purposes is called tempering.

The reason for tempering can be explained as follows: Cocoa butter consists of several fats. Some of these melt at low temperatures, and others melt at high temperatures. The fats that melt at high temperatures are, of course, the first ones to solidify as the melted chocolate is cooled. These high-melt-point fats give high-quality chocolate its shine and its snap (high-quality chocolate that has been properly tempered and cooled breaks with a clean, sharp snap). The objective of tempering is to create a very fine fat-crystal structure in the chocolate. In a melted, tempered chocolate, the high-melt-point fats have begun to solidify into fine crystals that are distributed throughout the melted chocolate. When the chocolate is left to cool, the chocolate sets or solidifies quickly because the fine crystals act as seeds around which the rest of the chocolate crystallizes.