Tempering Chocolate

One of the most important skills for a pastry cook to develop when advancing is how to temper chocolate. When melted, the cocoa butter in chocolate doesn’t naturally resolidify into the proper crystallisation structure. The goal of tempering is simple: to form the right types of crystallisation in the cocoa butter so that you get chocolate that has a shiny surface and snaps cleanly when broken. Untempered chocolate sets matte, often with white streaks of cocoa butter on the surface (this is called ‘bloom’) and crumbles rather than breaks evenly.