One of the responsibilities of a true gelato artisan is understanding the ingredients he/she is using in gelato. There is no way around this if you really want to work from scratch and call yourself a professional or artisan.
Whenever you use pre-made powders & flavorings, you get the recipes from the companies you work with and normally you have no clue about what ingredients you are using…. so please stop calling your product “artisanal” or “homemade” ;)
Sugar is a large category, and within this category you have different kind of sugars, all with different properties. The properties that, as a gelato chef, you are looking for are mainly sweetness and anti-freezing power.
Yes, you read that right: sugars do not freeze and therefore lower the freezing point, keeping the gelato softer. Basically, water freezes at 0C or 32F, if you add sugar to it you’ll need more cold to freeze the same water, therefore you now lowered the water freezing point. Also certain sugars are sweeter than others, allowing you to play with different ones to achieve the perfect sweetness and consistency.
Regular sucrose (cane/beet sugar) is the standard, then other sugars can be more or less sweet or have more or less anti-freezing power. This is one of the main reason why gelato chefs use a mix of 2-3 different kind of sugars in their creations. Another reason is that different sugars complement each others really well helping you with the structure of gelato or even enhance flavors, helping you creating a better product.
For these reasons, if you do not have any sugars or something that does not freeze (like sugar substitutes, sugar alcohols or other syrups like maple), you simply cannot make gelato…or even ice-cream (even tho now in 2018 there is a machine that will freeze gelato with no added sugars, but then that product must be displayed separately, at a much warmer temperature).
This is also why it’s really hard to make a good gelato that has “no sugars added” or “no sucrose added”. Everything you find in USA that claims to be “sugar free” is made with pre-made powders & mixes that use sugar alcohols or substitutes that alter the flavor significantly. Stevia is then 4 times sweeter than sucrose and this is why we really cannot use it as only sweetener, because we would need so little that it just does not bring enough anti-freezing power.
Our final tip is about sugar content in gelato vs sorbetti (the vegan, dairy & fat free options): gelato has normally between 18-22% of sugar content while sorbetti normally have a higher sugar content of 28-32% (this includes the sugars naturally present in fruit that sometimes can be as much as 18-20%, like in bananas or grapes). This is to say that sorbetti are fat free, but higher in sugar and also contain much less fibers and solids therefore regular gelato is a better option if you try to keep your blood sugar level under control.
Now you know a little more about the science of sugars in gelato, but if you need more insights please email me!
Ciao amici,
Vincenzo