Tempering Chocolate

Work with 1-2 lbs of chocolate at a time.  Less than that can be hard to get the right temperatures. 

 Note: talked with Becky Day and her and her mother uses a chocolate melting dipping pot to melt and keep their chocolate warm.  They place some chocolate into a separate bowl and dip about 10 chocolates then add more warm chocolate from the chocolate melting pot  and do another 10.  She said you want to have smooth motions drop the fondant center in pick up with two fingers and then place on wax paper and use finger to mark the top as to the flavor of your chocolates.  They buy their chocolate from Orson Gygi in a big block, Peter's Chocolate comes in a big red bag.    

Orson Gygi has a great Chocolate 101 on their blog:
http://blog.gygi.com/blog/2019/11/14/chocolate-101/

There are three different types of chocolates you can use.  Depending on what you are making will depend on the type of chocolate to use.

Baking chips are best to use for anything you are baking (ex. cookies, bread).

Highest quality and best chocolate is couverture chocolate.  This is the chocolate you want to use for dipping chocolates. 

 

Tempering Instructions from Orson Gygi:

1. When tempering Gygi recommends to use the microwave.  In a plastic or silicone bowl so it doesn’t get to hot. Also you will want a spatula and thermometer. 
2. Start with warming up 2/3rds your chocolate 1 minute in the microwave, stir, then  microwave for 30 seconds at a time stirring in each time and checking temperature until you reach the heat to temperature. See chart. 
3. Then add in the last 1/3rd or seed chocolate a bit at a time and stir to melt to get the chocolate to its use to temperature.  
4. Test your chocolate to make sure it is tempered correctly.  Take a small piece of parchment paper and dip it into your bowl of chocolate scrapping off the extra chocolate then lay on another piece of parchment paper.  
1. If it is tempered correctly it will set up within 3-5 minutes, it will have a nice sheen to it, it won’t melt immediately under pressure of your finger tip and it will have a nice snap when you bend it. 
2. If it isn’t tempered correctly you can start again by slowly heating you chocolate up to the heat to temp and adding some seed chocolate to bring the temp back down to the use at temp.  
5. If you need to warm you chocolate back up scrape all chocolate back into the bowl and heat it up no more than 5 seconds at a time in the microwave.  Keeping the temperature of the chocolate under the use at temperature. 
6. If it goes above the use at temperature then you will need to start the tempering process over again.  
7. Dipping chocolate works best in a cool area less then 70 degrees, best between 65-70 degrees.

Compound chocolate is much easier to use, but not as high of quality.

How to best store chocolate: