Bloom and Temper
Maybe you’ve heard (or read) me mention the terms “bloom” and “temper,” or maybe you’ve binge-watched enough cooking and baking shows to have these terms enter your vocabulary.
But what do they mean? And why are these terms important to chocolate makers, chocolatiers, and chocolate eaters?
Your nerdy Queer Chocolatier is here to help!
I'll break these terms down and share with you a bit more about how I handle my chocolate at various stages in production.
Bloom
There are two types of bloom: fat bloom and sugar bloom. The photo I posted above is an example of fat bloom from some of my own chocolate.
Fat bloom
Fat bloom is an indication that the cocoa butter has separated from the remaining mixture of sugar and cocoa solids. That separation happens when chocolate is melted and cooled without care. After the haphazard melting and cooling has taken place, the surface of the chocolate can tell the story; pale splotches or mottling will be visible and the texture will feel dry and crumbly.
Since we engage as many senses as possible when eating food, and are especially tuned to our senses when eating food that is as sensual (literally) as chocolate, appearance and texture make an impact on the overall experience.
The good news is fat bloom is not indicative of spoilage! It can be remedied with patience as a chocolatier or even just pushed through as a consumer! The overall flavor will still be roughly the same as the same chocolate if it had been tempered.
Sugar Bloom
The other type of bloom is called sugar bloom and it is a result of chocolate coming into contact with some sort of moi…. *shudder* …mois… let's just say humidity. Or condensation!
Sugar is hydrophilic, which means sugar loves water. If any bit of liquid gets on and stays in contact with your chocolate, the sugar crystals will lustfully draw toward that liquid and, over time, the liquid will evaporate but leave a crunchy sugar crystal heartbroken in its wake. It's safe to eat, but it will have a significantly noticeable—and not very pleasant—texture.
If you've ever asked me or anyone who is in craft chocolate how to store your chocolates or, more specifically, can you store them in your fridge, the hesitation you may witness in response is out of concern for the potential of sugar bloom.
When you remove chocolate from the fridge to room temperature, condensation may develop if the chocolate isn't well-wrapped and protected. Condensation is the main culprit for sugar bloom, so the best way to avoid this type of bloom from happening is to gently bring chocolate to room temperature before eating and maintain original wrapping (or add an extra layer of wrapping before storing chocolate in the fridge for extra protection).
Essentially, both types of bloom happen when chocolate has had some storage challenges with either heat, humidity, or direct intense light. Avoid bloom by storing your chocolate carefully or eating it all in one sitting what are you even waiting for anyway???
Temper
Temper (or tempering, or in temper) describes the process of working chocolate to achieve the preferred arrangement of crystalline structures.
More simply, tempering is melting, cooling, then rewarming chocolate so that it can be poured into molds or used as decoration that will result in a shiny, snappy end product.
Tempering, broadly speaking, is a heating process to harden a substance. Chocolate isn’t the only thing that is tempered; glass and steel are also materials that are tempered to add strength.
But for chocolate, the process consists of melting all of the crystalline structures to eliminate them and carefully cooling the chocolate in order to reform the ideal crystals—Form V, or Beta crystals—then gently reheating the chocolate in order to work with it for molding or decorating.
Tempering machines exist and range in effectiveness and cost but hand-tempering is also a valid approach to tempering chocolate. Although, it can be hard to scale up the quantities of chocolate when tempering by hand. Hand-tempering is an admirable skill and takes a lot of effort, knowledge, and practice. I will do it to keep myself honest and humble, but I do not hand-temper for production.
Tempering usually is the bottleneck of my own chocolate-making process which is why…
QC's Chocolate-making process
…I rarely temper chocolate!
I only temper chocolate if I’m making bars. And my tempering machine is reasonably effective but I have two challenges with it 1) scale and 2) customization. I can temper about five pounds at a time (the machine says it can hold up to ten pounds, but I find the chocolate doesn’t seem to stay in good temper the whole time) but I have enough melangers of a certain size that allow me to make 100lbs of chocolate at once so there’s the bottleneck. While the machine has factory settings for temperature curves for dark, milk, and white chocolate, I need to program my specific formulas in order to more suitably melt, cool, reheat my chocolate because the proportion of fat to the rest of the formula requires different temperature points held at different times.
But, the whole chocolate making process up to the point of tempering is what I follow when I make truffles. I don’t mind if my chocolate (fat) blooms while it rests after being poured from the melanger.
Why?
Well, when I make truffles, the first step is making ganache and making ganache involves melting and emulsifying chocolate with a fat (in my case, primarily coconut cream).
Here, I’m not melting to specific temperature points; I work the ganache to make it as melty and smooth as possible and then let it cool until it is firm, then portion and shape the individual truffles. Since I’m melting the chocolate and not concerned with crystalline structures, I don’t need to temper the chocolate first. It would be a stressful step that I don't need to bother with while I currently employ the machine I have.
Now, when I can upgrade to a beefy, smart tempering machine, that’ll be a different story! I’ll temper all the chocolate!!!
Goals!!!
I hope this was a easy read on a bit of chocolate terminology! I just had it in my mind to nerd out about chocolate today and wanted to share this with y’all as well, my dear readers!
Be sure to come see me at Minnetrista Farmers Market on Saturday mornings until the end of October and, if you’re in the Indianapolis area, you can find my products at Smoking Goose Meatery's Public Smokehouse! I’m sure I’ll nerd out on you in person, too!