Great-looking and delicious chocolates are a thing of beauty for the yes and a treat for the tongue. The shine, smoothness, creamy texture and crispness of chocolates come from tempering, an end-stage process that entails melting chocolates at a specific temperature, then cooling them to another particular temperature, and finally warming them up to its tempered temperature.
Tempering is also what increases the shelf life of chocolates. A phenomenon called blooming that makes the chocolates dull, crumbly, grainy and chalky is also averted by tempering chocolates.
When the fatty acids of the cocoa butter crystallize into six types of crystals, each proliferating at six various temperatures, tempering seeks to control crystallization so that only the formation of the type V crystals are allowed. You need type V crystals in good quantities to craft chocolate candy that’s silky, lustrous and rich.
While tempering by hand poses a challenge to even experienced chocolatiers, those new to tempering should do well by understanding what goes into the process more fully before trying tempering by hand.
It’s the sensitive nature of chocolates to lose temper when the temperatures are subjected to variations. This variableness thus necessitates maintaining particular temperatures precisely during the tempering process; if not, you’ll need to do tempering over again. That’s also why you may need to keep handy a reliable temper meter and a thermometer that’s calibrated often.
It’s advisable to maintain low/medium heat when melting of chocolates when tempering by hand. Tabliering, the French-preferred technique of tempering by hand, is carried out by pouring and spreading melted chocolate on a marble slab. Seeding, on the other hand and the other easier technique, involves the mixing of non-melted but tempered and melted chocolate so that the crystals in the first one will copy the structures of the crystals in the second one.
But you cannot shun using a tempering machine when you work in a commercial-grade chocolate kitchen. Whatever uncontrollable problems you face in manual tempering like moisture or fluctuating temperatures as well as inaccurate thermometers are avoided quite easily with a chocolate tempering machine. Also, type V crystals are produced in sufficient quantities when you use a tempering machine, you get uniformly tempered chocolates with the tempering machine even if the quantity is large, and the temper will also last for a longer duration. Above all, there’s a computer chip that controls and maintains specific temperatures correctly for you.
Obviously, you won’t face as many hassles in a tempering machine as when you temper by hand. You’ll have time enough on your hands to concentrate on creative planning for the development of your business and for innovative preparation of new varieties of chocolates with which you can lure your customers and grow your business.
Chocolate rates well on the scale of tempting young and old alike with its shine, snap and creaminess. But a great many chocoholics may not be aware that only tempering gives chocolates these tempting qualities because these are not natural to chocolates. The process of tempering is done in three steps– heating, cooling and reheatingwhile maintaining specific temperatures accurately all the way through.
Experienced chocolatiers as well as beginners consider maintaining specific temperatures accurately as the most difficult aspect of tempering:
The most elemental ingredient of chocolate–cocoa butter–contains fatty acids that can crystallize into six different structures during tempering.
Each of these crystalline forms tends to proliferate at six different temperatures.
Chocolates get the gloss and crispness only through the type V crystal and if the other types of crystals are allowed to proliferate as well because of different holding temperatures while tempering, you cannot have the required amount of type V crystals.
The trick then is to maintain only that temperature at which type V crystals multiply.
Tabliering and seeding are the two manual tempering methods and if you cannot maintain the right temperatures during tempering, then you’ll have to do the process again.
Apart from the complexity of keeping watch over particular temperatures rightly, other difficulties in tempering may arise due to moisture in the production area and in the equipment used, inaccuracy in the thermometer, and worker skill, among others.
If you want to make large amounts of chocolates, you can do so without fear with a chocolate tempering machine because these automated gadgets yield no differences in quality among different batches of chocolates, which is highly likely when tempering by hand.
The microprocessor on the tempering machine is meant for maintaining accurate temperatures during tempering. Tempering machines can also help not only in producing large quantities but for maintaining the temper for longer periods of time, too. Much of your time and effort can be focused elsewhere with the use of a tempering machine, particularly on developing product lines that ultimately gets you more profits in your chocolate making business.
Tempering by hand, if learned, can be useful when situations arise that demand just that. But buying a tempering machine is a good step towards the right direction since you can get high-quality chocolates consistently and work your delivery schedules perfectly.
July 20, 2009 at 10:12 pm · Filed under Artsy Stuff
Cuban artistry is a diverse multi-ethnic coalescence of American, African and European aesthetic design reflecting the various demographic of Cuba. Artists from Cuba took onboard European modernism and the early part of the 20th century witnessed an expansion in Cuban vanguardism trends; these trends were identified by a variety of contemporary esthetic styles. Noted Cuban creatives tended to come from the earlier part of the 20th century.
Perhaps the most celebrated piece of art to be produced in Cuba was THAT picture of a certain Che Guevara (shot by Mr Alberto Korda) which was to become possibly one of the most noted images of the past century.
The local Cuban artist cause accumulated some pace following the opening of the art academy (San Alejandro) back in 1818, which was designed to gratify the European appreciation of the bourgeoisie population of Cuba. In the late 1800s, landscapes dominated Cuban art and classicism was still the preferred genre.
Yet, the pioneering Cuban modern artist of the late 1920s had disapproved the academic orthodoxies of Cuba’s national art academy. In their formative years, numerous Cuban artists had resided in Paris, where they learned and assimilated the founding rules of cubism, surrealism and modernist primitivism. Once back in Cuba, they became dedicated to new aesthetic styles and were keen to combine this new aesthetic persuasion with a Cuban influence. The pioneering Cuban artists accomplished world acclaim in 2003 with the Modern Cuban Painting show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Individual health insurance is a well-known necessary expense that many people around the world are aware of, particularly in the United States. The different types of individual health insurance premium may vary depending on one’s list of medical problems. Therefore it is always important to research the different types of companies that offer individual health insurance before purchasing it, to avoid paying more than necessary. An unexpected illness can happen to anyone at any given time in our lives. Even children are not safe from terrible diseases such as debilitating cancer for example, hence the need for individual health insurance.
There are many companies that advertise their services for the health industry by producing promotional videos, these are almost art like videos that can be integrated into web sites and other media carriers, they introduce the service or the product by showing exact photos of the products, or by computer generated animation which is one the most advanced ways of presentation today. These also combine with corporate videos that are often sued for training and educate new employees of a company for new jobs or rolls in side the company, it is fascinating to learn how these systems work and how they operate.
