The best chocolate for baking

In North America, 'baking chocolate' usually means unsweetened chocolate — pure cocoa mass with no sugar. In the UK and much of Europe it usually means ordinary sweetened dark chocolate sold for cooking. A recipe written for one and made with the other is out by the entire sugar content of the chocolate, and recipes rarely say which they assume.

For most European recipes, a 60–70% dark bar chopped by hand. It is sweet enough to work in recipes that assume a sweetened chocolate and dark enough to taste of something. Avoid very high percentages in bakes with little added fat — above 80% the low sugar and high solids make the crumb dry.

Chocolate chips are formulated to hold their shape: reduced cocoa butter and often added stabilisers. That is a deliberate design and it makes them wrong wherever the chocolate should melt into the mixture. Use chopped bar for brownies, ganache and melted-in applications, and chips only where you want distinct pieces.

Cocoa powder has had most of its cocoa butter pressed out, so substituting it for solid chocolate removes a large amount of fat from the recipe. Natural and Dutch-process cocoa are additionally not interchangeable with each other: natural cocoa is acidic and reacts with bicarbonate of soda, while Dutch-process has been alkalised and does not.

Less than it improves eating. Baking combines chocolate with sugar, fat, flour and heat, all of which flatten the subtleties a single-origin bar is sold for. A well-made mid-price bar at the right percentage will generally outperform an expensive one used in the wrong role.