Changes of Dark Couverture Chocolate Hardness During Storage Tempered Using Automatic Tempering Machine with Tank and Tempering Temperature as Variables

Couverture chocolate is highly demanded by consumers. Dark couverture chocolate is known as chocolate with high proportion of cocoa. There are several parameters that need to be considered to ensure the quality of this chocolate. One of the important chocolate qualities is hardness. In chocolate making, which is affected by the tempering process. Generally, the tempering process is carried out manually or automatically. Manual tempering is done by hand and is difficult to control the process temperature. Therefore, an automatic tempering machine was chosen in this study by controlling the tank and tempering temperatures. The purpose of the research was to optimize the combined effect between tank temperatures and tempering temperatures of the automatic tempering machine on the chocolate hardness parameter. Different ranges of the tank and tempering temperatures were applied to the chocolate mass processed in the machine. Chocolate hardness during storage was in the range 12.27 to 20.19 N/mm2 in 45o C tank and 32.5o C tempering temperature. The optimum of the tank and tempering temperatures were 45o C-32.5o C (A), 48o C-32.5o C (B), and 50oC-31.5oC (C) which resulted in different k values and glossy appearances. The k values for A, B, and C were -0.00195;-0.0024; and -0.0031,respectively. While the determination coefficients for A, B, and C were 0.8970; 0.8887; and 0.9013, respectively.