ICE CREAM
Basic French or clustered-style ice cream mix is simply a creme Anglaise or clustered sauce mixed with 1 or 2 parts heavy cream for every 4 parts milk used in the sauce. This base is flavor, as desired, with vanilla, melted chocolate, instant coffee, sweetened crushed strawberries, and so on, chilled thoroughly, and then frozen according to the instructions for the particular equipment in use.
When the mix has frozen, it is transferred to containers and placed in a deep freeze at below 00 F (- 180 C) to harden. soft-frozen or soft-serve ice creams and gelato are served directly as they come from the churn freezer, without being hardened.
When you make ice cream or buy it, you should be aware of three quality factors.
1. Smoothness is related to the size of ice crystals in the product. Ice cream should be frozen rapidly and churned well during freezing large crystals don’t have a chance to form added to mix.
Large crystals may form if ice cream is not stored at a low-enough temperature (below 00 F/- 180 C).
2. Overrun is the increase in volume due to the incorporation of air when freezing ice cream.it is expressed as a percentage of the original volume of the mix. For example, if the mixture doubles in volume, then the amount of increase is equal to the original volume, and the overrun is 100%. Some overrun is necessary to give a smooth, light texture. If ice cream has too much overrun, it is airy and foamy and lacks flavor. It was once through that ice-cream should have from to 80 to 100% overrun, and hatless would make it heavy and pastry. This may be true for ice cream containing gums and other stabilizers, but some high-quality manufacturers produce rich(and expensive)ice cream with as little as 20%overrun.
Overrun is affected by many factors, including the type of freezing equipment, the length of churning tie, the fat content of the mix, the percentage of solids in the mix, and how full the freezer is.
3. Mouthfeel, or body, depends, in part, on smoothness, and overrun, as well as other qualities. Good ice cream melts in the mouth to a smooth, not too heavy liquid. Some ice creams have so many stabilizers that never melt to a liquid, unfortunately, many people are so accustomed to these products that an ice cream that actually does melt in the mouth strikes themes “not rich enough”.
Butterfat from cream contributes to a rich mouthfeel. However, too high a fat content can detract from the texture. This is because, when fat content is especially high, some of the fat may congeal into tiny lumps of butter during churn-frozen, producing a grainy texture.
A good gelato has a light, smooth mouthfeel, attributable to low-fat content and lack of emulsifiers, combined with low overrun.
The chef was her own miracle. She saw a brilliance in food, a potential to help and heal others, a way to show them how the sublime was simply a mixture of the ordinary. It was her genius at play, seeing what the rest of us didn't. I guess that's why we called it her culinary magic and joked that her spoon was a wand carved from the spirit tree. Either way, she made us all so happy, food does that, right? It feeds the soul, brings smiles and bonds, makes everything so much better
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon