Recipe Research 2012

LegatoGelato

              Smooth Taste…Island Pace

 Recipe Research

       Some of the most fun I have had with starting up this new business is making up recipes. I started out with a great book put out by Ciao Bella – they have had a successful ice cream/gelato business for many years and the book has a number of recipes and explains some of the reasons behind it.

          I’ve also spent hours on the internet doing research on gelato recipes (I love the internet; it’s like having a massive library readily available). The science behind gelato is absolutely fascinating as well – the changes to the taste and texture as you increase/decrease each ingredient is amazing. In addition, the process of freezing and delaying the freezing is very complicated.

          One of my challenges is there are not many recipes using goat milk. I found a couple recipes and have used one for homemade ice cream for a couple years now but gelato and ice cream are different.

              Making commercial gelato calls for pre-made syrups. Well, they really look like hair gel but we can call them syrups. Most commercial places use plain old cow milk from the grocery store (in bulk sometimes). Some commercial gelato stores make their gelato flavourings from scratch but it’s not that common. Most still aren’t using any type of high quality milk.

I had wondered how they got the pretty colours – its food colouring. Natural and artificial but it’s added to perk up the product. I don’t have much confidence in the safety of most artificial food colouring, over the years more and more have been pulled from use as carcinogens or allergens. Even a “natural” colouring can be suspect. You need to ask yourself how the colour was extracted, what process was used. Bet there was nothing natural about that.

          There really is no one definition of what is in gelato either. Some have added cream while others only use milk. Some gelato has added eggs others don’t. I followed the Sicilian gelato recipes and we use organic chicken eggs and organic cornstarch. The egg adds a bit of fat and helps make everything smoother, the cornstarch adds thickness without changing the flavours.

          The use of chemical emulsifiers and stabilizers is rampant in commercial ice cream and gelato. Even some of the people making gelato at home use the bean extracts, seaweed extracts, and gums that seem to have to be used in commercial gelato/ice cream to make it any good.

          Well – YUCK!

          We don’t use them and we won’t use them.

          It goes back to the question of HOW these extracts were made and what chemical process has gone into the making of them. For example, to get corn oil from corn; the corn is ground and then treated with the chemical used to dry clean your clothes (xylene I think). The rest of the processing is to take the poison out.

 

So make an informed choice! Read your labels, be cautious and eat LegatoGelato!