Guittard Couverture

In liquifying chocolate, it is the cocoa butter, the fat, that is actually getting melted – changing from solid to liquid state. Because of the triglyceride composition of cocoa butter, it melts over a temperature range (~90-120°F), not just one single point. This is what makes chocolate so palatable, and for this reason melting is in important part of handling and tempering chocolate.

The process of turning melted chocolate into a solid mass of stable cocoa butter crystals with a fine, even grained texture, accomplished with controlled cooling of the chocolate with agitation, to form many fine-grained beta crystals, as opposed to other crystal forms which are unstable and of random formation. 

A process to pre-crystallize chocolate by inoculating melted chocolate with beta form-V crystals from previously tempered, pre-crystallized chocolate.