Chef Michael Laiskonis on Bravo Italian
Chef Michael Laiskonis on Bravo Italian ice cream machines
Chef Michael shares that “the one piece of equipment that I’m currently obsessed with is an Italian ice cream machine made by Bravo. I love equipment and, as with so many things in life, you get what you pay for.”
Chef Michael Laiskonis has scores of accolades for his kitchen chops: awards from Pastry Art and Design, Bon Appetit, the James Beard Foundation, and the IACP. While he was the executive pastry chef of Le Bernardin, the restaurant achieved three Michelin stars and four stars from the New York Times, along with high praise for his innovative, delicious desserts. But it’s his kitchen at the Institute of Culinary Education that has us excited right now.
Laiskonis took the creative director position at ICE in 2012 to pass along his extensive pastry knowledge and have the time to focus on experimenting with truly new techniques; two activities that are part and parcel to a fine dining chef but hardly top priorities. At ICE, he teaches several workshops monthly, does regular consulting work and recipe testing for a range of culinary clients in different fields, and experiments with the cutting edge of kitchen technology.
Chef Michael shares that “the one piece of equipment that I’m currently obsessed with is an Italian ice cream machine made by Bravo. I love equipment and, as with so many things in life, you get what you pay for.”
With ice cream in particular—formulation and quality of ingredients aside—the best product is going to be that which is frozen the quickest; the faster it freezes, the smaller the ice crystals are and therefore the better the product. There are relatively inexpensive tabletop machines that may take you 25 to 30 minutes to freeze a quart or two. If you can do that in two to three minutes, the ice cream is going to be better.
What’s cool about this one is that there are two separate components: on the top is heat, so I can put all the ingredients for my ice cream base in, cook it, and then the trap doors open and bring the base down below, where it freezes. Most of the time I want to chill and age the base, so very rarely would I do that, but I could program everything on this down to a degree and make my ice cream would be very consistent.
It has a lot of preset programs, too, so I could make pastry cream, temper chocolate, make lemon curd, or even buttercream start to finish. Say you’re doing a Swiss buttercream, so you make a meringue with your egg whites and sugar over a double boiler, then whip it while adding softened butter. Here, you would put in the egg whites, sugar, and butter; it pasteurizes it and then it cools it down to just under room temperature so that you have a nice, soft, fluffy buttercream. If you have to make batches for a gigantic layer cake, that’s saving you massive amounts of time.
The Bravo machine is all about basic temperature control. Once you have equipment like this, the mind starts going to, “What else can I do with this?”
Source: seriouseats.com
Equipment & Concepts has a full range of Bravo freezers, gelato, pastry, chocolate and savory food machines and can help with selecting the best equipment for your business. Transform your ice cream parlor, restaurant or catering business into an artisan gelato and ice cream experience. Our authentic Bravo gelato makers feature the latest technology while being the most reliable and durable gelato makers and ice cream machines in the industry.
Bravo Trittico – Start of the revolution: in 1974 Genesio, founder of Bravo, submitted the first of a long series of patents: Trittico, the first and only complete laboratory enclosed in just one machine, which is less than three square feet can pasteurize and batch freeze high-quality artisan gelato. A patent that radically changes the way of thinking about the artisan gelato workshop. With Trittico a new way of making gelato has begun: the Trittico method, the new Bravo adventure, one machine that’s the most copied machine in the world today.
Equipment and Concepts is training ground for the United States in the world gelato competition. The team included captain Dirk Koeppenkastrop, Michele Pompei, Tim Brown, Chris Foltz, and team manager John S. Hui.
