The Gelato Great – Senor Dondoli, San Gimignano and learning to make our own pasta

Our day started with a beautiful drive to the town of San Gimignano, in the province of Siena. Our drive took about an hour and fifteen minutes, and ended in a windy road up to the amazing walled city. It’s located southwest of Florence and was “classic” Italy to me. There are towers throughout and it holds all the charm that I had hoped to experience during the trip.

The first event of the day was a gelato making class with Sergio Dondoli, when L.J. originally was booking it, it was almost full and only had a couple of spots so we went into the day thinking two of us would probably participate but the others would watch. L.J. had found so many good things about the class and Senor Dondoli especially that we decided to go ahead. To our wonderful surprise, when we arrived we found they had two classes and our class had the four of us and then possibly two to four others. We found him that morning, sitting on the stoop of his shop prepping herbs to be used in some of their flavors.

He was working, chatting with people passing by and then stopping for selfies with people that wanted a pic with him. He’s a larger than life personality, so very friendly and was 100% that way the entire time. So we walked down to their classroom and no one else every showed up for the class so we had our own private class with him! It was incredible!

He had Brenda and I capping the strawberries to start and then whispered that we could sample them. I honestly don’t believe I ever have had more delicious tasting strawberries! I may have eaten way too many over the next couple of hours but most of the time I was successful in hiding them as I quickly popped them in my mouth.

*Capping the most delicious strawberries I’ve ever tasted!*

While Brenda and I were working, Barry and L.J. started measuring dry ingredients and then the milk from the happy cows. This was one of his main explanations for such great tasting gelato. The milk is not pasteurized and very fresh. The cows are allowed to live on the land, are not artificially inseminated and not separated from their young calves, all of these things make for happy cows that then provide delicious stress-free milk! He did a much better job describing it and was so passionate about “real” gelato, which he said is only about 3% of gelato shops. We also talked about the differences between gelato and ice cream (the main one being the amount of air in ice cream). It was just so fun, his energy and love of his craft is amazing.

After our hard work making (and eating) gelato, we decided we still had room for lunch!

L.J. went off exploring and Barry, Brenda and I went around to a few shops. L.J. ended up climbing the tower and had an amazing view of the entire area. We wrapped up in town and started our descent to the parking area to head to our next food lesson of the day – pasta making! But don’t worry… one more stop before we left… Gelateria Dondoli! Because, obviously our class and tons of gelato wasn’t enough – that was morning and this was afternoon!

We went to an olive farm and our lesson was provided by Fulvio. This was a tour we booked through Viator ($108 pp) They also had guest rooms there and make their own olive oil.

He started with us rolling out our pasta. This pasta was done with two types of flour and then water. Pasta made with egg requires you to need to refrigerate it for about an hour before working with it. We also made bruschetta with fresh ingredients, garlic bread and then realized we had a third course which was chicken and pancetta , We worked first in one room, then in the kitchen, then were served in the dining room. It was casual and comfortable, he enjoyed teasing with us and it was a lot of fun.

We did two types of sauces, one a tomato, rosemary, olive oil and garlic. The second sauce was an olive oil, onion, beans, salt, pepper, thyme, Parmigiano-Reggiano and some pasta water at the end to finish it. Each course was paired with wine as well.