WHAT IS ARTISAN ICE CREAM?

Reflecting on what we understand and what the words artisan ice cream means to us, we will probably think of a series of positive ideas such as: milk, cold, refreshing, sweet, fruit, prime, good weather, sun, tradition, culture, children, art , people, health, pleasure, quality, natural ... everything that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Until recently, the consumption of artisan ice cream was considered a luxury, but the current economic and cultural conditions have allowed a radical change of this perspective.  Although the consumption of artisan ice cream remains a sophisticated treat, we have come to consider artisan ice cream as a natural product of high nutritional quality, which can be a small and pleasant snack in itself.

If we dispense with the meaning of the words and pay more attention to the product, we can define the artisanal ice cream as a solid / pasty composition obtained by mixing several ingredients, which is changed by the action of three elements: cold, movement and air.

Among the ingredients we can distinguish three categories: liquid, solid and air. Whenever we mix these three ingredients in proper proportions and subject them to the cold we will obtain: ice cream; depending on the proportion of each ingredient the ice cream will have some characteristics more than others, but we should always move within limits; if we ignore them, the characteristics or properties can degenerate into defects.

If, finally, we address to the purpose of the production process from the point of view of the final result, what we will have is a definition of what the artisan ice cream should be and what we will achieve whenever we attend to the limits and we are rigorous in the choice of our ingredients (quality) and know well how to treat them and elaborate them carefully to benefit to the maximum of their properties as food. The ice cream correctly formulated, balanced, elaborated and produced will be compact, silky, full-bodied, dry, velvety, tasty, fine (from the point of view of the ice crystal), resistant to changes in temperature during the period sale, and as indifferent as possible to the process of recrystallization of sucrose.