Cooking Class in Florence

This is a joint writing assignment by Sadie and Reese about the super fun cooking class we took in Florence. Reese wrote about pizza, and Sadie wrote about gelato! 

PIZZA

To make the pizza dough, you have to combine flour, yeast, water, olive oil, and salt together. You have to pretend the flour is a well and put water, olive oil, and salt in the middle.  You need to slowly add in the flour until it is sticky like dough. Then you have to knead it very well to make a perfect dough! 

Then here comes the fun part – putting your toppings on your pizza! I put on tomato sauce and this amazing cheese!!!! It was probably the best cheese I had on the trip!!! Now I will hand it over to Sadie. 

GELATO

First, we learned the major difference between ice cream and gelato, which has to do with cream versus milk. Ice cream is made only with cream: it’s in the name! The consistency is comparatively heavier and denser due to all of the cream. In contrast, the primary ingredient in gelato is milk, with only a little bit of cream. This gives gelato a very light and creamy texture and flavor. 

In class, we made chocolate gelato from cocoa powder, chocolate, sugar, cream, and milk. We boiled the chocolate, cream, sugar and milk until it simmered, and then sifted cornstarch and cocoa powder into the steaming chocolate. Then, after it cools, we add the concoction to the gelato machine and let it mix for 30 minutes, until it is a perfect creaminess, where it is not over mixed, and not undermixed, but just in between. The gelato was INCREDIBLE. SO GOOD. It literally melted in my mouth and it was the perfect amount of sweetness and bitterness. 

This was an amazing cooking class! We loved it and we hope you enjoyed reading!