Taking another step, training at the Gelato University in Bologna
As the days went by and we got closer to gelato school, I was a bit apprehensive about commuting the 8 miles from our rented apartment in Bologna. Driving in Italy is not without its challenges, but to be able to go to the Carpigiani Gelato University was enough to overcome any fears I had. This school boasts 7,000 annual attendants, puts on 500 courses a year over 12 campuses and 100 nationalities. So off Susan and I would go each morning, into the Bologna rush hour and arrive at Carpigiani headquarters for our class.
A little history, though. Any time we travel in Europe, in particular Italy, we are struck by how many gelato shops there are. They are not all alike in quality and it pays to look for the “artigianale” on their signs. While there are over 40,000 gelato shops in Italy, the United States has only about 1,000. Ironically, Italians rank only 8th in the world for consumption of ice cream type products at 8 kilos per person. New Zealand and the United States are number one and two with 28.4 and 20.4 kilos each respectively! Ok, enough statistics and back to gelato school.
We have been making gelato ourselves with our Lello machine for years. We wanted to work on real equipment, learn how to assemble, disinfect and make gelato using a professional machine. There were five intensive days of just that, with lots of formulation and ingredient functionality training. Also, there was a lot of gelato eating.
The class was over 30 students from at least 10 or 15 countries. We split into lab teams of three and went at it, each team producing two to three 5 kilo batches per class. As teams finished up with their lab work, we all crowded around the gelato case and tasted till we couldn’t taste anymore. One thing everybody learned from our Dutch born instructor, Bas Van Haaren, was how to make great gelato! We were there for a week, but quite a few students were there for a full month.
Whether or not our dreams of making and selling gelato ever materialize, we certainly had a wonderful time with our international cast of fellow students and fed our passion for gelato! Now it is off to France to get some immersion into the world of Maconnais chardonnay in the Bourgogne region of France.
