Alright then, now we're going to temper the chocolate

which is a necessary process to be able to work with the chocolate

Always, whether we want to make an artistic piece, chocolates or a chocolate bar.

We always have to temper the chocolate.

Tempering the chocolate means to force crystals to crystallize in the correct form
so that afterwards, the texture sheen and snap of the chocolate will be correct.

If we used that chocolate that we've melted at 45-50C

directly without tempering it, it wouldn't solidify properly.

Let's do a test.

If we dip that spatula in the chocolate that has not been tempered and we leave it
here.

Later we'll see how with the tempered chocolate there's a difference.

The traditional way, nowadays the tempering is done with machines,

but the homemade method that we still use in our workshops

the way to temper chocolate is to cool it down on a cold surface.

So this is a cold marble slab.

We cast the chocolate that is at 45-50C on the marble but we leave a small fraction
in the bowl.

That small fraction will allow us later to do the second part of the tempering
process.

Therefore, that chocolate, what we do is that we spread it

for it to cool down homogeneously.

The cocoa butter contained in chocolate crystallizes in various forms.

To be precise in 6 forms
of which we're only interested in the fifth one.

The fifth one ensures a perfect tempering.

And what we have to do now is to create nucleation sites for this particular form.

In any case, upon cooling it down we're generating five different forms,
all five of them when we combine this chocolate with that one that is slightly
warm.

We'll be able to melt the four unwanted forms and obtain exclusively the fifth
form.

To do this we chocolatiers do it in a very simple way,

which is checking that the temperature of the chocolate is slightly lower than that
of our lips.

When we reach that point we can mix that chocolate which is approximately at 28C
with the one that we left here which remains at 45-50C.

Another way to see it is that it starts to stick to the table because it is

solidifying.

Therefore when that chocolate reaches about 28C

we mix it back with the rest which is at 45C to achieve a final mixture of 30-31C.

Depending upon the type of chocolate,

not all types of chocolates need to be tempered at the same temperature.

For dark chocolate we'd be working at the temperatures I mentioned

while for milk chocolate or white chocolate we'd have to work at slightly lower
temperatures.

So once we obtain this, what we do is that we mix

homogeneously the two temperatures.

And theoretically, if I've done it right the final result should be a chocolate at
30-31C
which would be the optimal way to obtain a chocolate with the fifth crystalline
form.

And now to check it let's do a test.

Let's take a spatula, as before and in a few moments,

two to three minutes, we'll see how the tempered chocolate solidifies correctly
while the other one remains liquid.

And now if we check with the thermometer we'll see that we are at 30-30.5C
which is in that range of 30-31C that I mentioned earlier,

which is the adequate one to able to start working with that chocolate.

Now, we can have a look from the test we made, the untempered chocolate is still
liquid,
while the one that we've dipped in the tempered one is already solid.

This is the proof that we've done a good tempering. Shiny, smooth and crunchy.

So the first thing we can do when we have tempered chocolate is to make a chocolate
bar.

If we have a mold, we cast it inside the mold

we vibrate it
and now we would let it cool down, and after a few minutes
we'd have a chocolate that is tempered

and would have a good snap and sheen.