Long the sophisticated choice of chefs worldwide, dark chocolate has been steadily gaining in popularity among home bakers in this country.  With more recipes calling for specific types of chocolate, even specific cocoa content, dark chocolate desserts are clearly a hot culinary trend.  Consumers are beginning to explore and appreciate the complex flavor palate of darker chocolate from the semisweet to bittersweet, extra bittersweet and beyond.

These varieties in dark chocolate provide bakers with choices on levels of intensity—some may prefer a balanced sweetness, others a deeper flavor for their recipes.

And as the consumer appetite for darker chocolate begins to expand, premium chocolate makers such as Ghirardelli are first to respond, offering a wider variety of chocolate for distinguishing chocolate lovers and bakers at the grocery aisle.

To help consumers select the proper level of intensity of their baking chocolate, Ghirardelli is the first nationally available baking brand to include cocoa percentage information on its dark chocolate packaging.  Percentage of cocoa means the total percentage by weight of cocoa solids and cocoa butter combined, that is, the total percentage of ingredients derived purely from the cocoa bean.  By knowing the cocoa percentage, consumers can precisely match product to recipe, and personal taste, in recipes that call for specific levels of cocoa.

Process Important

The general rule for baking chocolate is the higher the cocoa content, the more intense the chocolate flavor.  However, it’s important to remember that high cocoa content alone doesn’t necessarily make a better chocolate.  How the beans are selected and processed, along with the balancing of ingredients, are equally important factors, combined with your taste preference.

Premier brands such as Ghirardelli begin by carefully roasting the finest hand-selected cocoa beans from around the world.  Pure ingredients like real vanilla are then added, and the chocolate is blended for hours.  A finer grind than the competition allows for easy melting into a glossy smooth texture.  The result is Ghirardelli’s award-winning deep, rich dark chocolate taste, with a distinct flavor burst—the premium chocolate essential for the finest baking results.

Five Main Types of Dark Baking Chocolate

Whether you’re making the Ultimate Triple-Layer Dark Chocolate Cake or a simple chocolate sauce, you will eventually need to decide what kind of dark chocolate to use. To help sort through the confusion, and make the right choice in the grocery aisle, it’s important to understand some basic chocolate terminology.

Here are the main types of dark chocolate used for baking: unsweetened, extra bittersweet, bittersweet, and semi-sweet.

Unsweetened chocolate: (Ghirardelli 100% Cocoa Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bar or Unsweetened Cocoa).  This is the most common type of chocolate used in baking. It is unadulterated 100% cocoa—ground roasted cocoa beans with no other added ingredients—and imparts a strong, deep chocolate flavor in all the sweets you add to it.

Extra Bittersweet chocolate: Ghirardelli’s new Extra Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar with 70% cocoa (highest cocoa content of any national baking brand), gives consumers the opportunity to select a deeper, but balanced dark chocolate intensity.

Bittersweet chocolate: Still dark, but a little sweeter than extra bittersweet.  It has less sugar than semi-sweet chocolate but the two can be used interchangeably in baking. Bittersweet chocolate often has an unsweetened chocolate content of 50% or more. Ghirardelli offers a 60% Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar, and 60% Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate Chips, (which has the highest cocoa content of any national baking chip brand).

Semi-sweet: (Ghirardelli’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Baking Bar and Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips). Semi-sweet chocolate is typically slightly sweeter than bittersweet, and is the choice most often used for frostings, sauces, fillings, and mousses, though it is interchangeable with bittersweet chocolate in many recipes.  Semi-sweet generally contains 35-45 % unsweetened chocolate.