Avanguardia Gelato - Paolo Brunelli

In addition to a deep friendship, Paolo Brunelli, Gianfrancesco Cutelli, Alberto Marchetti, and Andrea Soban also share the same vision of the creation of the product. The four professionals create simple recipes, which use as few ingredients as possible that may detract from the genuine flavor of the ice cream. This is the background philosophy of four of the greatest exponents of Italian ice cream. All this is reflected in Avanguardia Gelato, a book in Italian written as a joint effort that presents ice cream as natural as possible to recover its sensorial and gastronomic side. Thus, in their recipes, taste prevails rather than the search for a technically perfect product, from the point of view of texture and spatulability.

This book reclaims a very concrete and defined concept. They say this is a way of understanding the "pulita" (clean) recipe, a formulation that seeks the genuine expression of artisan ice cream through fresh and natural raw material, without the use of other compound ingredients, with the incorporation of carob bean gum and guar gum as thickeners, and egg yolk as an emulsifier. It is one of the most important concerns that Italy currently has, one of the most current research trends in the high-end ice cream industry. But the book is also an interesting showcase of flavors and combinations that are currently being worked on in Italy through the finest new Italian ice cream. The trajectory of the four ice cream makers is also backed by numerous awards and recognitions.

In Avanguardia Gelato, the authors did not want to enter into traditional ice cream parameters such as PAC (Antifreezing Power) and POD (Sweetening Power) because, they say, they change according to the software used in the formulation and, depending on production equipment. In this sense, one of the suggestive aspects of the book is the introduction of a new index, the perception of sweetness, in each ice cream. For this purpose, a scale of values ​​ranging from 0 (savory) to 10 (very sweet) has been created, with number 5 representing a balanced sweetness. This is very useful information when choosing a flavor to put a recipe into practice in an ice cream shop. In addition, each recipe shows its release date and a note from the author that adds information and interesting facts about the ingredients.

Paolo Brunelli is the owner of the Gelateria Brunelli chocolate shop in Agugliano nelle Marche; Gianfrancesco Cutelli is at the head of the Gelateria De’ Coltelli di Pisa and Lucca; Alberto Marchetti, from the homonym ice cream shop in Torino, Milan, and Alassio; while Andrea Soban comes from a family that has managed a reputed ice cream shop in Valenza for almost 50 years.