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Post by sugaralchemy on May 27, 2006 23:14:57 GMT -5
I'm curious if anybody has ever tasted chocolate that is too tempered - meaning that it is extremely brittle, glossy, etc to the point it might be considered excessive.
I have been working with maximizing the tempering, and I've produced chocolate that is almost glass-like. I'm curious how you all feel about that from a sensory perspective... for a chocolate bar, do you like an amazingly crisp, extremely tempered bar, or do you prefer something a touch softer?
I know this is a little bit of overlap with another thread, but I'm specifically curious about how everybody feels about it from a sensory perspective. More tempering means it doesn't melt quite so readily, breaks differently, etc.
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Post by chocdoc on May 28, 2006 6:43:48 GMT -5
I don't know if I would consider this 'overtempered' or simply 'perfectly tempered'. Softness, I think, is more a function of the ratios of ingredients in in your formula than the degree of temper. Chocolate that has a preponderance of stable beta crystals is thicker at the same temperature than chocolate with less of these crystals and you can push the working temperature higher without driving it out of temper.
That being said I do tend to like my chocolate a bit softer for just eating out of hand.
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Post by Sebastian on May 28, 2006 8:24:26 GMT -5
Temper is a delicate balance. If you over temper or under temper, you're going to have problems with your finished product. Chocolate that is in good temper should have a very definate 'snap' to it, and if dark chocolate, may be brittle. As it ages, the chocolate will undergo the same entropic changes that anything else does, and will slowly migrate from a predominance of type 5/6 crystals to a heavier concentration of type 6/7, which will yield an even harder end product. You can't really go directly to type 6/7.
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