Of course, you can bake with any sort of chocolate, and I do, but being Chocolate Correspondent means I have a lot of it spare, despite giving much away. I once made my chocolate rye cookies and served them to a friend. She went away and made her own. “Mine were nice,” she said, “but not as nice as yours.” Mine had about £40’s worth of craft chocolate in them.
Clearly this is madness and outside the remit of all but the privileged, but the quality of chocolate you use in baking really does make a difference. Although I can and do use chocolate bars chopped up post-testing, having specific cooking chocolate (which may have more cocoa butter in it for easier melting) makes life easier, because it often comes either in pastilles or little chocolate buttons, which are bliss for the lazy. The go-to for a lot of professional chefs is Valrhona. I love the pastilles: for rich chocolate baking, the Ghana 80% is my favourite (I also love it as an eating chocolate), but the Guanaja 70% is more readily available. There are lots of variations in each cacao percentage, from 29%-85%, with different flavour profiles. For white-chocolate cooking, the Dulcey, biscuity and caramelly, is hard to beat.
