What Makes Gianduja So Special | The Chocolate Professor

In Italy sharing chocolate doesn’t end with Christmas. Many people celebrate the traditional Carnival, in February, when bold costumes and lavish food precede a time of constrain and abstinence toward Easter. One of the most festive and cheerful times of the year, with plenty of delicious fried cakes and treats, in Piedmont, indeed, Carnival has a specific traditional mask strictly related to the region’s chocolate heritage and to one of its most delicious specialties: Gianduja (also called gianduia in Italy). The heavenly creamy paste made of cocoa powder, cocoa butter, sugar, and finely ground hazelnuts takes its name from the mask of a merry gentleman who loved wine and food and used to visit hospitals and hospices donating candies to children and to the sick before Lent.

History of Gianduja

Gianduja character from commedia dell'arte

Created at the beginning of the XIX century by two local puppeteers, the Gianduja mask was born approximately at the same time as the gianduja paste, created in 1806 in Turin – the main city of Piedmont – by local confectioners looking for a way to reduce the cocoa content in chocolates. This was a consequence of the shortage of the product caused by an import ban from the United Kingdom and its colonies imposed by Napoleon Bonaparte, which caused a steep rise in cocoa prices. In order to economize, ingenious chocolatiers used the relatively inexpensive paste obtained by grinding the delicious local hazelnuts Tonda Gentile delle Langhe, growing in the area now (a region now mostly famous for Barolo and other fine wines) and the final result was even more delicious, giving a rounder, intense, and silky taste to the chocolate.

In 1852, the Turin-based chocolatiers Michele Prochet and Ernesto Alberto Caffarel perfected the recipe by gently roasting the hazelnuts before grinding them, to get a deeper shade of taste. In 1865, Caffarel – whose name is still linked to a renowned chocolate brand, now part of the Lindt & Sprüngli group – also invented gianduiotti, the rich and creamy extrusion chocolates made of gianduja paste with the shape of an upturned boat, which also resembles the tricorn hat of Gianduja, for the first time ever individually wrapped in a tinfoil cover: the new product, launched during Carnival, was handed out by men masqueraded as Gianduja.

Some Leading Producers of Gianduja

Since then, gianduja – used in chocolates and cakes, or even sold as an opulent spread – and gianduiotti have been appreciated by children and grown-ups, both in their traditional recipe and shape and in new, original ones created by companies and artisans to keep up with the times. Thanks to them, today the charm of the chocolate and hazelnut mix is stronger than ever. Caffarel – which has a whole line named after its iconic creation, Gianduia 1865, including traditional and dark chocolate gianduiotti, a spreadable cream and a liqueur – just launched its Gianduia 1865 Intenso, where the original recipe (in this case, using a 26% of Nocciola Piemonte Pgi instead of the usual 28%) is reinforced with a sound 40% of cocoa.

Venchi is another well-known company born in Turin in 1878, when the young Silvano Venchi decided to invest all his money to buy two bronze cauldrons for his experimental recipes with chocolate eventually leading to new products such as the addictive Nougatine, made of chopped and caramelized hazelnuts coated in extra-dark chocolate. Nowadays mostly famous for its gelato, the chocolate fountains, and for the brilliant Chococaviar – crunchy chocolate microsphere giving a unique and irresistible texture to the pralines, which also comes in the Gianduia version with a crunchy whole hazelnut in a dark chocolate shell covered with 75% dark chocolate microspheres – Venchi also offers a wide range of gianduiotti (from the classic “Ancient recipe” to the dark filled one, from the pistachio to the reduced sugar one) and other gianduja-based products, from bars to pralines and cremini (layered chocolates).

The history of Gobino – an excellent artisan chocolate maker based in Turin – is more recent, yet not less interesting, and already features three generations of brilliant craftsmen and entrepreneurs. It was in 1964 that Giuseppe Gobino, whose experience in cocoa refining dated back to 1950, joined a local confectionery company as a production manager. In 1980 he became the sole owner and made a definite turn towards research, dedicating special attention to local products such as Giandujotto and Gianduja cream. His son Guido Gobino – who gives the actual name to the company, after renaming it Laboratorio Artigianale del Giandujotto back then – joined him in 1985, making a further step forward regarding technological innovation, sustainability, and raw materials: over the years he started to closely collaborate with Tonda Gentile hazelnut producers in Langhe, milk farms based in the Piedmont Alpine area and cocoa producers from Mexico (such as Chontalpa, a Slow Food Presidium) and other countries, leading the way to a 100% traceable and transparent cocoa supply chain. In 2021, his son Pietro joined the company and dedicated his innovative spirit to streamlining business management, digitization, and environmental, social, and corporate governance issues.

Amongst Guido Gobino’s innovations in chocolate, many are focused on gianduja: in 1995 he launched Tourinot, the elegant and small 5-gram version of the classic Turin Giandujotto made with the best raw materials and the original extrusion technique; in 1999 he created Tourinot Maximo, following the original Gianduja recipe of 1865, without powdered milk; in 2017 the Tourinot N°10 with dark chocolate, tempered strictly by hand as it once was, was born; while in 2021 the company launched the White Tourinot, where the Piedmontese tradition meets the raw materials of Sicily, such as almonds, orange peel and whole-grain salt from the Paceco salt marsh near Trapani. The small percentage of cocoa comes instead from the Indonesian area of Borneo island, where a sustainable agroforestry system defends the local biodiversity from deforestation.