Discover Gelato Fundamentals
Discover Gelato Fundamentals, a comprehensive new booklet designed for professionals looking to deepen their understanding of gelato, sorbets, and frozen desserts.
Italy, the birthplace of gelato, is renowned for being the birthplace of a culinary tradition that is loved all over the world. More than just an ice cream, gelato is the embodiment of an art combining history and savoir-faire. Using artisan techniques handed down from generation to generation, Italy’s master ice cream makers focus on balanced flavors, creamy texture and high-quality ingredients.
To showcase this heritage, Valrhona Selection has been working for several years with two great Italian ice cream chefs, Andrea Bandiera and Paolo Brunelli, famed for their technical skills and creativity, to offer exclusive gelato recipes.
The fruit of this partnership is an inspiring technical booklet, a real go-to for professionals in search of innovation. This booklet contains balanced, ready-to-use gelato recipes, as well as all the basics for creating your own. In line with the Measured Indulgence approach launched by Valrhona, each recipe illustrates a precise control of quantities and a meticulous use of carefully selected ingredients to offer the right flavors in the right proportions.
Chefs Andrea Bandiera and Paolo Brunelli's Philosophy
Ice cream is a magical creation
It is created by combining mathematical calculations and pleasure. It captures flavors at ten degrees Fahrenheit (minus twelve degrees Celsius) and changes consistency on contact with air — fascinating indeed. It is a popular product and at the same time, lends itself to bold, visionary combinations.
It is changing shape and role: officially the dessert of the future, because it provides the essential, refreshing, sweet note at the end of a meal. It is eaten with the breakfast brioche, becomes the filling in a cookie or an ice cake… Or it is served on a dessert trolley to celebrate a jewel of Italian tradition that is back in vogue.
Without air, water and sugar, there is no ice cream
But after that, a whole world of ingredients can be used. From comfort foods like fresh milk, cream, egg yolk, chocolate and seasonal fruit, to vegetables and herbal drinks.
With gourmet ice cream, the boundaries between sweet and savory are definitively swept away, and with modern ice cream, the same goes for the boundaries between ice cream and fine cuisine. Fermented mushrooms, roots, salted or fried meats, sour or bitter jellies are combined with ice cream in cheeky freedom.
Italian ice cream has the creamiest texture of them all. This is one of the features that places it on the Made in Italy podium and sets it apart from other industrial methods and products. The origin of perfect consistency lies in raw materials being mathematically balanced. A millimetric balance between solids and liquids, which starts with writing an impeccable recipe and ends in the churner.
The ice cream business is growing at an impressive rate.
The last twenty years have seen recipes become “lighter” with the use of healthier ingredients. New taste expectations have emerged, production formats have evolved, and consumption has too.
The traditional dessert trolley now exists only as a symbolic adornment, and the typically family-run businesses that open in May and close in September are disappearing day by day. A new atmosphere, a new entrepreneurial style, and, above all, a new concept of ice cream, are obliging stores to change, now opening all year round, where ice cream is combined with pastries, chocolate, bakery and catering.
Sorbet has a particular identity in this context: although there are no regulations which define it precisely, it is a well-established tradition distinguished from ice cream by the total absence of animal products.
Originality versus industry rather than craftsmanship versus industry
The concept of artisanal ice cream is a confusing one: to date, there are no specifications governing it, and no clear boundaries.
Is an ice cream artisanal simply because of the choice of fresh ingredients? Or because it has a limited production run? Or because the ice cream factory is run by a Master, who is on site? There is no exact answer. In fact, we need to change our perspective and define craftsmanship as opposed to the industrial process, which tends towards standardization and uniformity. Originality, uniqueness, flexibility and imperfection are what make sincere and passionate ice cream makers. They work in laboratories where precision and technology reign, but where inspiration, history, experimentation and mistakes also have their place.
So, according to this definition of the artisan, to the blend of air, sugar, chocolate or fruit, the ice-cream maker adds his know-how, inventiveness, geographical roots, sensitivity (musical for Paolo) and personal history.
Valrhona Selection and chefs
Working for Valrhona in the Italian market for over 10 years, Valrhona Selection showcases Italian ice cream expertise with chefs on the international stage.
The products are sustainable, the approach is based on sharing knowledge and culture, the relationships with producers are direct and the quality of the processes is guaranteed. In practice, the focus on essence pursued by Andrea Bandiera and Paolo Brunelli is witnessing the total disappearance of cocoa powder use: this is challenging for Italian palates, because it is one of childhood’s best-loved flavors.
Ice cream after ice cream, test after test, the use of Valrhona couverture has proved indispensable in the world of artisanal Italian ice cream, revealing as they do the true taste of the chocolate, the authentic perception of a terroir and a faithful color.
The choice of ingredients is becoming increasingly selective, and all the Valrhona Selection brands are expanding the possibilities: from couverture chocolate to vanilla, from fruit-based technical ingredients to decorations. This means that gelato is no longer just a dessert, but a true taste experience, the expression of respectful choices and raw materials of exceptional quality.
"Our constant search for new frontiers in technology and the creation of extraordinary ice creams continues to set us apart from industry."
