Baking Chocolate
Baking chocolate, dark and bitter with no sugar at all, is the basic ingredient in chocolate-flavored foods.
This is the hardened chocolate “mass” or the basic chocolate liquor (hardened). Very sturdy stuff. Oddest of all baking chocolates is Bakers Germans Sweet Chocolate. An employee (Samuel German, an American) of Walter Bakers chocolate company in 1852 added sugar to their baking chocolate to create Bakers Germans Sweet Chocolate. Naturally, they charged a hefty price for that added sugar. Indeed, it may have been the first time we paid through the nose for having sugar added to commercial products—most certainly, it is not the last.
Stouts and porters do well with such stark chocolate.
Sweet, Semi-sweet and “Dark”
Sweet and semi-sweet “dark” chocolate is made from 15 to 35 percent chocolate liquor, plus sugar, cocoa butter and vanilla. It varies in sweetness and color intensity, and the description on the label has little to do with sweetness. Chocolate manufacturers are just as reluctant to tell us what level of sweetness their products contain as are wine makers. One just tastes to decide.
As the level of sweetness rises, we can move to mellower beers such as dark lagers, bock beer and brown ales.
The New Gourmet Chocolates
According to some authorities, dark chocolate is becoming the new expensive gourmet concoction, much like coffee a few years back. In the manner of coffee companies, chocolatiers carefully blend the various basic beans. And there are single-origin bars, the chocolatiers chocolate.
There are three of these basic beans. Criollo, the rarest, is prized for aroma and flavor. The others, popular with chocolatiers, are Forastero, robust and plentiful, but less distinctive; and finally, Trinitario, a cross between Criollo and Forastero, which is easiest to cultivate. These go well with strong Baltic porters and imperial stouts.
Our FDA has dark chocolate requirements. The content of cocoa and cocoa butter must be 35 percent minimum, with the balance from sugar, milk solids, lecithin, flavorings and stabilizers (paraffin).
