Pizza and ice-cream course in Florence with tasting

Pizza and ice cream make everyone go crazy – young and old alike! And they are also among the excellences that for centuries have made Italian cuisine famous all around the world. What better way to stay in Florence than to spend a few pleasant hours in the company of your family or your travel friends, discovering all the secrets on how to knead pizza and how to make ice cream? A professional chef will devote themselves entirely to preparing a journey through the fantastic world of pizza and artisan ice cream especially for you. In small groups and in a relaxing and playful atmosphere, you will learn how to make pizza and Italian ‘gelato’. Not only that: our Florence cooking lesson on pizza and ice cream will also be an opportunity to discover many interesting facts on these two delicacies. First of all, our chef will tell you the fascinating story of the origins of pizza and the equally enthralling ice cream origin. You will immediately pass from theory to practice. You will get down to work and learn once and for all how to prepare pizza. Under the chef’s guidance but unleashing your own creativity, you will have a lot of fun making pizza and tasting your creation. If you have kids, pizza making will be a great activity to enjoy, but we are sure that adults will find it equally enjoyable to juggle between flour, tomato puree and mozzarella. After the savoury pizza you will go on to desserts and discover how to make ice cream, one of the most popular sweets around the world. Some of the ingredients for ice cream making will be offered to you for a pleasing tasting session that will make this experience even more enjoyable.

Our pizza course in Florence will open with an interesting story on this famous excellence of Italian cuisine. We would love to say proudly that it was born in Tuscany but, as everyone knows, it was people from Naples who invented it. Pizza history began in southern Italy when, in the sixteenth century, a kind of focaccia seasoned with basil, lard, garlic and salt was prepared. Tomato puree was only added when it started to spread around Europe, thanks to its arrival from Peru at the hands of Spanish colonizers. Mozzarella instead, was added as late as in the mid-1800s. The birth of pizza as we know it today is attributed to the best pizzaiolo in Naples, Raffaele Esposito, who apparently created it in honour of Queen Margherita, recreating the Italian tricolour flag with the colours of the topping ingredients. Once you have discovered where the idea of this delicious dish comes from, you will be ready to entrust yourself to the guidance of our chef, an expert pizzaiolo, who will explain you how to make pizza step by step. Obviously, the first point of our lesson will be the pizza dough rising: fresh beer yeast, dry or sourdough? Our expert will explain to you everything you need to know and will be happy to answer all your queries. After having learned how to knead pizza dough, the most interesting part will begin: preparing the dough! Do you want to learn how to make it fly with your hands, like the most experienced pizzaioli do? Well, that might require a bit more practice, nevertheless we are sure you'll be able to roll the dough by creating a layer of just the right thickness. After that, you will be free to choose your toppings by creating the pizza you have always dreamed of. Again, the chef will explain how best to use salami, cheeses and vegetables. Once your pizza is finished, it will be ready to be put into the oven! You are the ones who will bake a pizza and the ones who taste it, along with a good glass of wine and soft drinks for your children. We Tuscans would say ‘ganzo’!

After a savoury course, you will pass to sweet and start our cooking lesson in Florence on how to do ice cream. As with pizza margherita’s history, Italian ice cream history is equally important, so you will first have to discover its interesting origins. Foods similar to ice cream have been found in ancient China, Greece and Arab countries but the one we eat nowadays was invented - guess where? Precisely in Tuscany, thanks to the multifaceted architect Bernardo Buontalenti who in the 1500s first used milk, cream and eggs for his ice cream recipe. Being a chemist, he developed a mixture to produce artificial ice with a machine he invented, which was used to prepare a cream flavoured with bergamot, lemons and oranges. It was then Caterina de Medici who made the delicious dessert known at the court of France. After that, Florence ice cream from the Medici Court flooded the world! The first secret to ice cream making that our chef will reveal is the importance of choosing the ingredients - strictly top quality and fresh. This part of our lesson on how to make ice cream in Florence is a perfect excuse to have a little tasting session with the ice cream ingredients, after which you will pass to the fun practical part and discover how to prepare gelato. The chef will guide you along the steps to make ice cream: mixing, pasteurizing, freezing, hardening and preserving, starting with the recipe for ice cream recommended by our expert chef. Wait and see, mastering the techniques, tastes and colours of artisan ice cream will be a highly entertaining experience. By the end of the preparation, you will have earned yourself a nice cone of ice cream, ‘un bel cono’ – and we can assure you it will be the best one you have ever tasted! This experience will let you take home the memory of pleasant moments spent in joy and relaxation, but also a wealth of useful skills on how to make ice cream (‘gelato’) and how to cook pizza. Make sure you organise a dinner with friends or family to put your knowledge to practice and show them how much you learned in Florence, thanks to the best cooking lesson you will ever have!

You can choose the duration of the tour according to your needs: in fact, there are 2 itineraries: a 6o-minute and a 120-minute one. Send us your request by filling out the form. Remember to specify your preference about the duration of the tour. Our staff will answer you as soon as possible, after checking the actual availability.

All we have to do is to wish you all the best... have fun!