I love making ice cream at home, but this series really leveled me up: underbelly-nyc.blogspot.com/2016/05/ice-cr
Three ideas:
1. Dextrose + invert sugar to lower sweetness
2. Milk solids to depress the freezing point and lower water %
3. Replace most eggs w/ gums to stabilize w/ cleaner flavor
Conversation
I made two batches in the last two weeks following these ideas, and they're both a huge leap better than any ice cream I've made before!
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Do you feel like the ice cream you make is better than what you can buy? What I hear from is that you don’t get better ice cream, just more control over the precise flavor (which seems like it could mean better depending on your tastes?)
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It's much better than what I can buy from an ice cream shop, but not as good as ice cream from serious pastry lines at high-end restaurants. Relative to typical ice cream, mine's:
- way less sweet
- higher fat
- better flavorings: I'll use $$ ingredients; a $10 retail pint can't
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One funny reason why homemade can easily be much better than ice cream shops' is that in many states (like CA), if you mass-produce ice cream, you must start from a base made w/ an inspected pasteurization facility. So they all use the same bases from e.g. Strauss and doctor it.
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Oh that’s sad. Not sure if you were implying this, but do you use raw milk/cream for yours?
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Replying to
No, but because I'm making my own base I can adjust fat, egg, and sugar content appropriately for each flavor, and I can use the heating process to infuse ingredients like coffee. Premade bases are hard to infuse well (can't reheat too hot), and they have fixed component ratios.