Balancing in Practice — The Gelato Textbook

The sugars, the milk solids, the stabilizers — balancing gathers them all as numbers inside one mix. Think in components, not ingredients, and bring them into their target ranges. Here the knowledge of Part I becomes a single blueprint.

Think in components, not ingredients

Balancing (bilanciamento) is the work of bringing the components of a mix into proportion. A switch of thinking is needed here. Not the sum of ingredients — so many grams of milk, so many of sugar. Think instead in the components each ingredient carries: sugars, fat, milk solids-not-fat (MSNF), other solids, and water.

Milk, for example, is handled as a collection — water, lactose, fat, protein, minerals. Cream is fat, water, and a little MSNF. Every ingredient is separated this way, and each component is summed across the mix. The sum of the solids is the total solids (solidi totali); the remainder is water.

Fig. 5-1　In balancing, the same ingredients are separated into components and summed. The design works with the proportions of components, not the weights of ingredients.

Balancing is nothing but this work: bringing the proportions among the components, and between solids and water, to fit the texture in view.

The target ranges

Where, then, are they brought? By the kind of gelato, each component has its empirical working range. The milk-based crema family and the fruit- and water-based sorbetto family differ widely.

Tab. 5-1 Approximate target ranges for the principal components
Component	Crema (milk-based)	Sorbetto (fruit- and water-based)
Sugars	16–22 %	up to 33 %
Fat	6–12 %	essentially 0
MSNF	up to a calculated ceiling (below)	0 to a small amount
Other solids (stabilizers among them)	very small	very small
Total solids (= the sum above)	roughly 32–42 %	roughly 28–32 %

The ranges for sugars and fat, and the ceiling for MSNF, are checked against the technical literature. The 32–42 % of total solids for crema is also a value the literature states directly — down to what happens outside it. Below the range, ice forms on freezing and the gelato turns hard and cold. Above it, the solids fail to dissolve fully, and the gelato turns soft and at times powdery. The sorbetto range, too, is a value the summary table of the same literature states directly.

The 6–12 % for fat is the outer frame of the range it can take. As Chapter 3 showed, past about 8 percent the fat phase can separate when homogenization is not thorough. Twelve percent is not "this much may go in". It is the line up to which the formulation — the amounts and proportions of the mix — still stands.

The lower 6 is an outer frame too, and this side is easily missed. Fat does not make gelato lighter the more it is removed. Fat supports the air bubbles (Chapter 3), and it carries aroma as it melts in the mouth (Chapter 11). A formulation thin in fat is not light but lean, and the touch of ice comes straight to the tongue. A gelato that calls itself crema has a line below as well.

This table is where balancing aims. Set the sugars, and sweetness and hardness follow — the POD and PAC of Chapter 2. Set the fat and the MSNF, and corpo and the frame follow (Chapter 3). Only the MSNF stands written not as a range but as a constraint. The reason, and the way its ceiling is found, deserve a section of their own.

The ceiling for MSNF can be calculated

Unlike the other components, the ceiling for MSNF is not a fixed number. It moves with how much water the rest of the formulation leaves. So it is calculated — every time.

Spot illustration of Pan balance and weights. The scale that brings components into balance.

And the constraints are two — independent of each other, coming from different reasons.

The first is the limit of the water the milk solids can hold. For the solids of milk to hold water, they need six to seven times their own weight of it. Short of that, some solids find no water to hold, and the texture leans toward grit.

Limite s.l.n.g.

Ceiling for MSNF = ( 100 − % sugars − % fat − % other solids ) × 0.15

What stands inside the parentheses is the region left to MSNF and water together. Multiplying it by 0.15 says one thing — MSNF may take at most 15 percent of the region it shares with water. Aim at 18 % sugars, 9 % fat, and 1 % other solids; the ceiling is (100 − 28) × 0.15 = 10.8 %.

The character of that 0.15 deserves a closer look. Fill the ceiling exactly, and the water is 61.2 % against 10.8 % of MSNF — only 5.7 times the solids. That falls short of the "six to seven times" stated above. This formula, in other words, holds no margin against the limit of what the solids can bind. If anything, it draws its line slightly past that limit.

The literature presses the artisan to stay always below the ceilings, with room to spare — and that insistence is not idle. A ceiling is not a value to aim at. It is a line not to approach.

The second is the solubility of lactose. As Chapter 3 showed, lactose that fails to dissolve crystallizes, and makes the defect of sandiness. Lactose dissolves only so far, and a mix is at least six-tenths water. From those two facts a working rule follows — lactose must not exceed 10 percent of the water part.

This second constraint serves as the check, run after the first formula has set the MSNF. In the example, total solids come to 18 + 9 + 10.8 + 1 = 38.8 %, so the water part is 61.2 %. Ten percent of it is 6.12 %; confirm that the lactose stays under. About half of MSNF is lactose, so 10.8 % of MSNF carries about 5.4 % — inside the line.

The two constraints do not always return the same answer. In this example the water-holding limit arrives first — 10.8 % against 12 %. The stricter one governs.

These two constraints at work are why MSNF alone stands written as a constraint, not a range. It is there to avoid the sandiness of Chapter 3.

Designing the split of the sugars

Deciding the total of the sugars is not enough. At the same total, a different split moves hardness and sweetness separately (Chapter 2). The practical guidance the literature gives is this:

Dextrose stays within 10 to 30 percent of the total sugars. Its anti-freezing power is strong; on dextrose alone, the gelato could not hold its shape at storage temperature.
Invert sugar replaces 10 to 20 percent of the sucrose. Strong in anti-freezing power, it works in small amounts.
Glucose syrup can replace up to 20 percent of the sucrose. It suits formulations that tend to run low in total solids, lending stability. To this 20 percent, the literature attaches no basis. The dried and the liquid form differ by a fifth in solids at the same weight (Chapter 2). So decide which form the 20 percent is measured in, and carry that decision through. Sorbetto has a separate, stricter ceiling (Chapter 9).
Dextrose and glucose syrup are normally used one or the other, not both together.

And the three ceilings above cannot be used at the same time. The literature itself states plainly that combining them at their maxima is impossible.

In a fruit sorbetto, the flesh of the fruit brings its own monosaccharides, fructose among them. In excess they lower the freezing point too far, and the gelato does not set. The adjustment is then to replace part of the sucrose with the liquid form of glucose syrup.

The procedure — from the target to the fine-tuning

Balancing wanders least when it runs in this order.

Procedura

① From the kind and the texture in view, set the target ranges of Tab. 5-1
② Build the rough outline with the main ingredients — milk, cream, fruit, sugars
③ Separate every ingredient into components; sum each component and state it as a percentage
④ Check total solids, sugars, and fat against their ranges — and MSNF against its calculated ceiling
⑤ Fine-tune the component that falls outside, using a different ingredient

For the hardness in step ④, the PAC calculation of Chapter 2 gives the estimate. Once the split of the sugars is set, total PAC is the sum over each sugar — amount × PAC factor. In this value itself there is no "correct" answer. It is a measure for reading which way hardness moves when the split of the sugars is exchanged within the same formulation. Unlike the ceiling for MSNF, no formula decides it. So keep the PAC of a formulation that proved "just right" at your own serving temperature. That is the only benchmark there is. Step ⑤ is simultaneous equations — move one component, and the others move. Here the exchanges learned in Chapter 3 and Chapter 2 do their work — "fat only, without adding water"; "hardness only, with the sweetness unmoved".

The numbers are a starting point

Balancing is the technique that brings a formulation into the range of right answers. It does not guarantee a good gelato. At the same numbers, the best answer moves with the ripeness of the fruit and the flavor of the milk. Landing inside the ranges is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

The artisan's view

A new formulation is made once, and tasted, before it is recorded. If the calculation is flawless and the tongue says "heavy", the tongue is right. And when a formulation is delicious for no clear reason, write its numbers down above all. What cannot be reproduced stays luck. A balancing sheet is a tool that translates the memory of the tongue into numbers, and keeps it.

Here Part I closes. With the blueprint drawn, the next work turns it into actual gelato — pasteurization, aging, freezing. The same formulation, through a different process, gives a different structure. The science of that process is the business of Part II.