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Post by Alan on Mar 23, 2006 10:06:08 GMT -5
Dear all,
When reading various industry books, they often mention the three general terms: Under-Tempered, Tempered, and Over-Tempered.
It seems obvious to me what under-tempered is, and what tempered is, but how would one define "over-tempered?"
When I first came across the term it struck me as the equivalent of saying "Yeah, that house is too well-built."
When talking about the crystalline structure of the cocoa butter, one would think that having as many Type V Beta crystals as possible (anywhere from 3%-8% and on up) would be a good thing. Is this not the case?
Or, is this simply a way of stating that the chocolate would have been tempered "enough" with less time spent on the processes, and therefore money would have been saved if the process had been stopped earlier(at the 8% upper limit)?
Is it strictly a cost issue with tempering longer than is necessary, or is there a real chocolate state known as "over-temper" that has a negative impact on the product? And what would this negative impact be?
Thanks,
Alan
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Post by Alchemist on Mar 23, 2006 15:05:53 GMT -5
**speculation here**
I have actually been thinking about this and though I have never seen the reference to over temper, it fits with some chocolates I have tasted. They are just TOO hard. Being so hard, they don't melt well in my mouth and consequently, I don't get the flavor explosion I would expect from this "high end" chocolate.
And that kind of makes sense in my mind. Too much type V and it is rock hard (like a classic crystal). You want a little of the others to promote proper mouth melt, but not so much to melt in your hand (hrm - doesn't that sound catchy ;D)
This is a great example of "The Art and Science of Homemade Chocolate". The Science is how to get a great temper. The Art is how to not go all the way to a "scientifically perfect" type V only crystallization.
BTW, I think a great way to get that under control is cooling times. i.e. let it set at room temp 1 hour, then refrigerate to "set" the matrix. Too hard? reduce to 45 minutes. Too soft? Increase to 90 minutes. I have not actually tried this, but it is another parameter to think and experiment with.
BTW, I do have some data to back this up. With the same exact temper batch, I separated it into multiple room temperature set times of 0, 60 min, 120 min and set until unmolding time. The "0" went directly into the refrigerator and did not temper. The 60 was perfectly good. The 120 and non-refrigerated sames were indistinguishable from each other and a little harder than the 60.
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Mar 23, 2006 16:46:22 GMT -5
I'm definately no expert in the field but my understanding was that over-tempered chocolate was chocolate that had been melted, tempered and then by reaching "over-temper" it had become too thick to effectively work with - ie., the viscosity becomes too high. This may result in, say, overly thick shells if you are producing moulded pralines. I'm not sure what it means for the chocolate when it has set.
Like I said, no expert so I am happy to be corrected on this.
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Post by Alan on Mar 23, 2006 16:59:39 GMT -5
I'm definately no expert in the field but my understanding was that over-tempered chocolate was chocolate that had been melted, tempered and then by reaching "over-temper" it had become too thick to effectively work with - ie., the viscosity becomes too high. This may result in, say, overly thick shells if you are producing moulded pralines. I'm not sure what it means for the chocolate when it has set. Like I said, no expert so I am happy to be corrected on this. I don't think that this is what my books are refering to (though I would also be happy to be corrected). They seem to be refering to an actual state called "over-tempered" that can be tested for in still-melted chocolate using a special meter (tempermeter) that will show the cooling curve of the particular chocolate, and it can fall within a large range from very under-tempered to slightly under-tempered, all the way to very over-tempered. If it were the case that it had just thickened too much (i.e., become to viscous), they probably wouldn't be using tempermeter to know that, but rather a viscometer. But, I could be wrong. I find John's thoughts interesting and am trying to confirm them by sifting through these various books. So far, no luck. I have one book left that might go into more detail. Alan
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