Last week my friend and possible business partner, Keri travelled with me to Penn State to undergo two very intense days of ice cream lectures, presentations, labs, and many discussions. I'm not sure we knew exactly what to expect, but it was certainly different than we had anticipated.
The class began on Saturday morning at 8am. We were in a pretty small classroom in Penn State's new Food Science building. It was on the second floor of their famous Berkey Creamery, where some of the most famous ice cream in the country is sold. We were among about 70-80 students of all different ages from all over the world. When we introduced ourselves and told
our "ice cream dream", we discovered that most of the students were hoping to open up their own ice cream shop somewhere in middle America, many were already in the ice cream business (either from the small business angle or the bigger manufacturer side), and some just loved ice cream and wanted to learn more about it.
The lectures started pretty immediately. Dr. Phil Keeney gave us an introduction to Frozen Dessert Compositions. Dr. Keeney evidently is a legend at Penn State. A friend of mine who went to Penn State was pretty excited when I told him we met Dr. Keeney. He's been at the Food Science department for many years and a favorite flavor at the Cremery (Keeney Bean Chocolate) is named after him. He discussed the legal differences between ice cream, sherbet, sorbet, etc. In order for an ice cream to be considered ice cream it has to contain at least 10% butterfat. Then there is custard, which is richer and creamier and contains a minimum of 1.4% egg yolks. Many people call custard French ice cream and that is usually the kind of ice cream I try to make.
Then there is reduced fat, light, low fat, and non fat ice creams, which all have legal constraints that classify them as such. Sherbet can have between 1 and 2% butterfat, which means just a slight bit of dairy, but lots more sugar. And, of course, sorbet has no dairy.
I found Dr. Arun Kilara one of the most interesting speakers. He spoke the first day on ingredients of ice cream. So he spoke briefly on both dairy fat and msnf (milk solids not fat), which are anything found in milk that are NOT fat (for instance, protein). He also got into sweetners (sugars and the like), stabilizers, emulsifiers, flavors, and colors.
These last four ingredients are things that I didn't want to be in my ice cream. Stabilizers are ingredients that help keep ice cream together and bind water. They definitely give ice cream shape and texture, but I always related these to preservatives. While they do preserve the texture of the ice cream, they won't prevent bacteria from forming. And they are often from natural ingredients, but ugly sounding words, like guar gum and carrageenan.
Emulsifiers help disperse the fat in the water. These also help with a smoother texture of ice cream. These sound less natural, with names like poly this and mono glycol that. Granted, ice cream can be made without both stabilizers and emulsifiers (I do it all the time), but they certainly seem to add texture.
Keri and I sort of tuned out the next speaker - John Hinkle. He was a nice enough guy, but we really didn't like what he represented. He is the President of National Flavors and he really seemed to present the first of many infomercials we were to witness here at ice cream school. His company sells flavor extracts, which can be both natural and artificial. Keri and I agreed it is much more interesting and creative to be in charge of getting the flavors in the ice cream ourselves. We are also against any sort of manipulated and created flavors. We learned that some of these are just cooked down concentrated flavors of a fruit or spice or something. But when we looked at the sheet of flavor options - anything from green tea to cotton candy to lemon custard and so on - we were sort of disgusted. And to learn that most ice cream shops in America just buy these liquid flavors and add them to their mix!!
After lunch Dr. Bob Roberts (poor guy!) taught us about pasteurization and manufacturing a mix. I tried to pay attention but it got very technical and scientific and I sort of drifted off. It also seemed to involve huge pasteurization machines and manufacturing on a huge level. This is when I began to realize that we were not able to make our own mixes.
I have always bought pasteurized milk and pasteurized cream and added them together and then figured out how to incorporate the flavors. This was one of the most exciting and creative parts about making ice cream for me. Well, over the next few hours, we learned that legally if you want to sell the ice cream, the entire mix has to be pasteurized together (minus the flavor). This put a huge damper on all our ideas. I was even more saddened when I learned that these mixes come with sugar and stabilizers and everything already mixed in. So what if I wanted to make the ice cream with honey instead of sugar? Or brown sugar? Too bad. The sugar is already in the mix. I felt like this was very limiting and I saw my creative juices being sucked away.
Deborah Lee, the owner of a gelato shop in North Carolina, tried to get us all excited about gelato. Now, living in New York, gelato is something that I see every day. It seemed that this is a new exciting product for a lot of America. And Deborah said this was a great way to finally get creative (oh, now we're getting creative?) Gelato has no federal standards to say what it must or must not contain, but generally it has less air and less cream than regular ice cream. It's usually denser and smoother. Deborah said we can get creative in our presentation by adding fruit slices or pieces of candy. I think Keri and I are just snobs, but none of her gelato presentations looked very artistic to us. We would get an even closer look a bit later.
Next the class split up into three groups for labs. Our first lab was with Dr. Roberts and it was a history and tour of the Creamery. It was neat to learn the history of Penn State's dairy farm and ice cream shop. And the factory was pretty impressive. But this was such a huge operation that it didn't seem completely
relevant to what most of us wanted to do. Again, it got very scientific. What about just a big pot with some fresh fruit, sugar and cream? No, we got some huge pasteurization machines to do all that for us. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to taste their ice cream.
The next lab was with Deborah Lee and she demonstrated making gelato. She was making a "unique" flavor to show us how creative you can get with gelato. She made a grapefruit and thyme sorbetto. The texture was really smooth and refreshing, but the flavor was just awful. It was much too bitter and the thyme just didn't go well with the grapefruit. Not impressed, Deborah.
By the final lab, I was exhausted. But it was probably the most helpful of the bunch. It was with Dr. Kilara and it involved tasting many different types of ice creams. We tasted about eight different vanilla ice creams all with different characteristics. One had high
fat, one low fat, one had high overrun (overrun is the amount of air put into ice cream), low overrun, no stabilizers, etc. Then we had two chocolate ice creams - one with vanilla added and one without. I think this was to demonstrate the effect vanilla has on just about any flavor. It's really like the salt of the ice cream world - it brings out the other flavors.
After a while, all the different ice creams started to taste the same. I don't think I was quite prepared to taste all these. It's sort of like a wine tasting where you really have to be focused and not drink too much wine because they start to all taste the same after a while and you might just be a little tipsy. It was definitely a bit of ice cream overload. But it was an interesting and useful project.
That night they threw a very nice little reception for us. There were finger foods, free beer and wine, and the gelatos that were made with Deborah Lee earlier in the day. I don't think Keri nor I tried them. I'm not sure if it's because the last thing we wanted to do was eat more ice cream or if it was because we knew they weren't the best.
At the reception, we got a very interesting lecture from Steve Christensen. We actually met Steve on the shuttle from our hotel to the reception. He was a witty Australian guy who was the first to inform us about the legalities of not using your own mix. He was easy to talk to and seemed the least technical and scientific of the teachers. And we learned from him that pasteurizing machines are becoming illegal in the states of California and New York. Great.
He led a very interesting and funny lecture on opening an ice cream business. He made the talk very fun and I think everybody agreed he was the best of the presenters. He compared opening a shop to having a baby and divided the whole process into trimesters. He owns a slew of custard shops in Australia and teaches a hands-on class in St. Louis. He also has his own blog known as the ice cream bloke where he travels around the world on ice cream adventures. Sounds like this man has my dream job. Check him out: www.icecreambloke.com
The second day got off to an even more scientific start as Bob Roberts talked about freezing and hardening. The key to good ice cream is to freeze the mixture into billions of tiny little ice crystals. The bigger the ice crystals are, the grainer and less fun to eat ice cream gets. So we want more ice crystals that are smaller, as opposed to less ice crystals that are larger. Bob continued to talk about how this works scientifically. My mind doesn't exactly work in a scientific manner, so I was lost here at times and really just wanted to talk about how exciting it would be to make bacon ice cream or some such!
The next speaker was Ted Galloway, who is a representative from Classic Mix Partners in Wisconsin. He talked about Soft Serve and Custard products and gave himself a big plug for his pre-manufactured mixes. This is where were began to learn about ice cream machines and specifically soft serve. There are different machines for soft serve ice cream, which is constantly moving the mixture until it is ready to be dispensed. We saw examples of these machines later.
Dr. Kilara returned to talk to us about sherbet, water ice, and sorbets. Now people still buy a manufactured mix for these things, but there is no need for them to be pasteurized (except for sherbet which does contain a small amount of dairy). Honestly, I love sorbets and water ices. I think they're more fun in the mouth and a lot lighter than ice cream. I could eat those all day long. But the public wants creamy, smooth ice cream. I'd be happy sucking on a flavored ice cube all day. Isn't that terrible?
After that, Patti Kroening spoke to us on the importance of freezer sanitation. She spoke about how often you need to sanitize the machines and how to go about doing that. That will become incredibly important once I invest in a commercial machine and am selling my product to the world.
And the last lecture was Ted Galloway again who talked about the importance and process of choosing a mix manufacturer. This is still breaking my heart. I really didn't want to have to buy a mix from a manufacturer. It takes away a lot of the creativity and freedom of putting together a flavor. This lecture was mainly about the professionalism of dealing with your manufacturer and finding the one that is right for you. How do the other artisanal ice cream shops in New York get around this? Do they have connection with local farms? Do they ignore this law? Is there another loophole that we're missing? This is something we need to find out when we get back to the city.
After lunch, we had some more labs. This is really where it turned into a big infomercial for companies selling their products. It is definitely a great marketing tool and a way to find suppliers. Keri and I are not quite there yet, so it seemed a little late night infomercial to us.
First we got a demonstration of three different soft serve freezers. The actor in me was sort of more interested in the drama between the competing companies and their sleazy salesmen ways of trying to sell their freezers. We both agreed that we weren't really interested in soft serve. But I must say, trying the soft serve ice cream really brought me back to my childhood. Soft serve was always my favorite kind of ice cream - it was so cold and soft (who would have thought?) and it was fun to play with the swirls with my plastic spoon. There is definitely a soft spot in my heart for soft serve. But I don't think you can get as creative or find authentic unique flavors in it. And it often feels a little plastic-y to me - maybe it was those plastic spoons.
Then we had a big round of demonstrations of batch freezers. They all had many different features - some were self-cleaning, some had a timer to tell you when they were ready, some were better suited for custards, etc. One in particular really made us wonder. It seemed one machine had almost a built in pasteurizer on top where you would heat the mix and infuse flavors and then you moved it to the freezer section where you could freeze it. We were so confused. We thought this was illegal.
When we found two of the instructors and questioned them, they seemed to sort of avoid the question. They said some people do things differently. I'm not sure if they were saying that it was an illegal method and some people turned their ears. Or was it that this was a feasible way of doing things but the mix manufacturers don't really want us to do it that way? I'm still not completely sure.
We seemed to have gotten quite a bit of information from different sources at this ice cream convention. It did feel more like a convention and less like school, especially towards the end. I'd really like to find out what the true laws are and what is and what is not possible.
We definitely learned a lot and I think our eyes were opened a bit to the realities of opening an ice cream shop. I don't think all of these technical details were necessary, but it is certainly good to get a taste of it and start thinking about the whole thing in a different, more practical way.
But for now, I can't wait to get back to making my ice creams on my little Cuisinart that I bought at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. And I don't have to use any liquid flavorings or manufactured mixes if I don't want to.
