Is it possible and necessary to temper store-bought quality chocolate like Lindt?
Say, for example, you want to use it to make chocolate moulds – would it be possible to melt and temper the chocolate and have the same result as that of couverture chocolate?
Best Answer
Yes, you absolutely can (Lindt dark chocolate bars work just fine).
Whether you can temper chocolate is simply a matter of whether there's enough cocoa butter (the fat that is actually crystallizing during the tempering process). You will want to have at least ~30% cocoa butter by mass if you want to temper the chocolate, but even 20% will work.
When you see a chocolate bar that says something like, "70% cocoa," that is the sum of the fat (cocoa butter) and non-fat parts (cocoa solids) of the cacao bean. That 70% might be divided between 30% fat and 40% cacao, for example, which is definitely sufficient for tempering.
If you want to know if a particular bar can be used for tempering, here's a quick test:
Read the label, and see if the primary fat is real cocoa butter
Make sure that the bar is at least 30% fat by mass
Small warning: different chocolates have different tempering curves. This is why dark, milk, and white chocolates generally have slightly different tempering curves. If you have a good, instant-read thermometer, it will help in the process of learning how to temper your chocolate of choice.