Tabliering, the Artisan’s Art of Tempering by Hand
Chocolate making could be fun but chocolatiers can face some failures when tempering by hand and hence sometimes dread it. The difficult part in tempering by hand is in manually maintaining accurate temperatures. Hence most commercial-grade chocolatiers and hobbyists have taken to using chocolate tempering machines that not only take care of this aspect with a microprocessor but keep the temper intact for longer hours.
It’s not surprising if the billion-dollar chocolate industry grows exponentially even amidst a recession. There have been many changes in the chocolate making process but there are customers who, even now, seek handmade chocolates. Artisan-chocolatiers, who are experts in making these handmade confections, command the following of these gourmet chochoholics especially as they use a manual tempering method, called tabliering. In tabliering, a technique which came from France, the chocolate is cooled on a marble slab.
One important thing to remember before starting tabliering is that you should prevent the “seizing” of chocolates, brought about by moisture, rapid over-heating and freezing of chocolates. “Seizing” makes the chocolates lumpy and thereby makes it useless for dipping and molding.
Chocolate bars of a pound in weight are cut into thin strips. You should keep dry your work area, your hands, and all equipment used as a precaution against seizing. Boil water in the lower pan of the double boiler and keep stirring the chocolate contents in the upper pan till they melt at a temperature of 108-115F. Different types of chocolates melt at different temperatures. You should keep monitoring temperatures with a thermometer that is capable of measuring even low temperatures of 82F.
You should check if the melted chocolate, or mush, flows smoothly and not fall like a lump when you pour it into a mixing bowl. Make sure there’s no moisture from under the pan as you pour. Keeping 1/3 of the melted chocolate in the bowl and ensuring that it continues to have a temperature of 100F, pour 2/3 of the contents on to a marble slab and work upon it with a spatula till it cools to a temperature of 80-82F.
After this, both the 2/3 and the 1/3 parts are mixed together and worked upon till it cools to a uniform temperature of 80-82F. Reheat. During reheating, you shouldn’t fail to maintain these temperatures: dark chocolates at 88-90F, semi-sweet chocolates to 86-88F and milk chocolates, at 82-84F. Get a knife and dip it into the mush. Let it dry five minutes. If the chocolate coats the knife tip with a glossy, hard shell, this shows that the chocolate is tempered. Then you can proceed to dipping and molding.
If you are not cautious to maintain accurate temperatures, you will have to repeat tempering. A bain-marie is used to set the tempered chocolate on for while to keep it tempered longer, but make sure that moisture still doesn’t get into your chocolate.
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