The Store-Bought Brands Ina Garten Recommends For 'Good' Chocolate

Forget chocolate chips, even those of the Guittard brand. Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, bakes with specific chocolate brands in mind, which she refers to as "good chocolate" in recipes online.  On her website, she defines "good chocolate" using three particular chocolate brands —Lindt, Callebaut, and Valrhona, all available on Amazon, as her preferred brands for baking. 

While Garten doesn't elaborate on why she likes these three brands, it's easy to assume it's because they're of high quality. Each of these chocolates classifies as a more gourmet counterpart to your standard chocolate bar. They also come in enough variations that you can choose whichever type suits your recipe best. 

To make matters easier, they're no more difficult to pick up than your tried-and-true Hershey's bar. Sure, you may not always see them on the shelves of your local grocery store, but you can certainly buy them online as well as at higher-end grocers. As for if — and why — "good chocolate" actually matters in a baking recipe? You may assume the exact type and brand of chocolate will go unnoticed and masked by the rest of the baked good, but the quality of chocolate will come through in ways you may not expect.

If you're already making the effort to bake something from scratch, don't counteract your hard work by using subpar chocolate. While chocolate chips are fine and always do the job, they're not living up to chocolate's potential. In general, you want to look for a high-quality chocolate with a richer flavor. You don't want chocolate that's too sweet, but rather a variety that complements the other ingredients. That means robust and well-vetted chocolate bars — like those from Lindt, Valhrona, and Belgian Callebaut — are all fail-safe options. If you're making a recipe that calls for chocolate chips rather than melted chocolate, you'll have to chop up the bars to make them work. However, the taste is well worth the added step.

And, luckily, it's easy to incorporate Ina Garten's preferred chocolate brands across your favorite desserts. Garten specifically singles out "good chocolates" in her recipes for white chocolate cookies, dark chocolate bark, and white chocolate bark. However, you can incorporate any of the chocolates as a substitute for the chocolate you normally keep in your pantry. For instance, Valhrona makes all the difference in Tasting Table's own Fleur de Sel Chocolate Cookies, while the addition of Lindt is more than enough to elevate your standard chocolate chip cookie. The brands, are, after all, Barefoot Contessa-approved.