I would like to know how to temper chocolate without seeding it with already tempered chocolate.
Possibly this comes from a misunderstanding for the reason for tempering:
My understanding is that pretty much all shop bought chocolate (at least for cooking) is tempered already and melting it effectively un-tempers it. It is then re-tempered by slowly mixing in part of the original, unmelted chocolate.
What if I have melted the entire bar of chocolate? How would I then temper it?
I've seen in many videos and articles, which describe tempering, that "there are different ways to temper" but they all then go on to describe the "seeding" method. Which seems like cheating to me – or, at least, a chicken-and-egg situation; How does one make tempered chocolate without having tempered chocolate to begin with?!
Best Answer
Tempering chocolate is ensuring melted chocolate has a nice shine and there are a few methods to do that:
(which is the most labour-intensive method, but the easiest to do if you've never done this before)
which answers all of your questions as now you know what tempering is, how to get out of the chicken-and-egg situation, how to very first chocolate was ever tempered etc... :-)
As most chocolate recipes are made by professional Chocolatiers, they don't have time to perform the old tried-and-trusted granny method so they'll tend to use the seeding method...
This is what tempered chocolate should look like:
P.S. If this is the very first time you're making your own chocolates, drop this step entirely: it's just the look and feel that'll change as they will look very professional. (I never temper my chocolate as I only care about the taste and without tempering they'll look like they're "home-made") ;-)
P.P.S. There is never any chicken-and-egg situation: if you think any of those situations through till the end you'll realise the egg was first because dinosaurs laid eggs long before there were any chickens! :-)