GELATo

 

Gelato (Italian pronunciation: [dʒeˈlaːto]; plural: gelati) is the Italian word for ice cream. Italians use the word gelato to mean a sweet treat that is served frozen. Gelato is made with milk, cream, various sugars, and flavoring such as fresh fruit and nut purees.

The ambiguity about the use of the word gelato happens with the spread of many gelaterie (stores where gelato is made). It is correct to say that most gelato is different from the traditional recipe of ice cream because it is lighter having a lower butterfat content than traditional, factory made ice cream. Homemade gelato typically contains 4–8% butterfat, versus 14% for ice cream in the United States. Depending on recipes and the person making it, dairy based gelato contains 16–24% sugar. Most ice cream in the United States contains 12 to 16% sugar. The sugar content in homemade gelato, as in traditional ice cream, is balanced with the water content to act as an anti-freeze to prevent it from freezing solid.

Types of sugar used include sucrose, dextrose, and invert sugar to control apparent sweetness. Typically, gelato – like any other ice cream – needs a stabilizing base. Egg yolks are used in yellow custard-based gelato flavors, including zabaione and creme caramel. Non-fat milk solids are also added to gelato to stabilize the base.

Making gelato is similar to making ice cream. The mixture for gelato is typically prepared using a hot process first, where the sugars need to dissolve. White base is heated to 85 °C (185 °F) completing a pasteurization program. The hot process to make chocolate gelato is essentially the same for conventional ice cream, and depending on recipes, it is meant to be traditionally flavored with cocoa powder and cocoa butter.

Yellow custard base, which contains egg yolks, is heated to 65 °C (149 °F). The gelato mix is often then aged for several hours for the milk proteins to hydrate, or bind, with water in the mix. This hydration reduces the size of the ice crystals, making a smoother texture in the final product. A non-traditional cold mix process is popular among some gelato makers.

Unlike most commercial ice creams in the world, from a process point of view, gelato is typically frozen very quickly in individual small batches while the conventional ice cream is frozen with a continuous assembly line freezer. Churning during the freezing process incorporates air into the mix making it lighter. The added air is called overrun. The overrun in gelato is generally 20–35%. The gelato lower overrun (compared to ice cream) results in a more expensive, denser product and with more intense flavors.