Knowra Gelato Gelato Gelato is an Italian frozen dessert made with milk, sugar, and flavorings. It is churned slowly and served relatively warm, giving it a dense texture and pronounced flavor.
Ice cream : A frozen dessert made from a mixture of dairy, sweeteners, and flavorings, typically churned while freezing. Its higher air incorporation and often higher fat content distinguish it from gelato.
Batch freezer : A machine that freezes and churns a dessert mixture in discrete batches. Traditional gelato is commonly made in batch freezers with limited air incorporation.
Granita : A semi-frozen Sicilian dessert made from water, sugar, and flavorings, scraped into coarse crystals. It is a regional Italian frozen dessert with a texture distinct from churned gelato.
Pistachio gelato : A gelato flavor made with pistachios or pistachio paste. Pistachio shows how nut pastes supply both flavor and fat to a gelato base.
Sorbet : A frozen dessert made from sweetened water and flavorings, without dairy. Sorbet lacks gelato’s milk base and has a different texture and flavor profile.
Overrun (ice cream) : The percentage increase in a frozen dessert’s volume caused by air incorporated during churning. Gelato’s low overrun helps give it a compact, dense body.
Ice crystal : A solid crystal formed when water molecules arrange into an ordered structure during freezing. Small ice crystals help gelato feel smooth rather than grainy.
Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli : A Sicilian-born entrepreneur associated with the Parisian café Le Procope in the seventeenth century. His café helped popularize Italian-style ices and sorbets in Paris.
Stracciatella (ice cream) : An Italian frozen-dessert flavor made by drizzling chocolate into a mixture as it freezes, forming fine shards. It demonstrates how a simple finishing technique creates contrasting textures in gelato.
Frozen custard : A frozen dessert made with milk or cream, sweetener, and egg yolks. Egg yolks distinguish frozen custard from most gelato formulations.
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