Traditional ice cream with natural ingredients: the Dentoni tradition which has set a standard for ice cream in Lecce and surroundings

In an era where such words as nature, environment, territory, biodiversity and craftsmanship have become synonyms with innovation, our ice cream makers have been used to live their artisanal skills as a cult and a personal mission. The ice cream by Dentoni, already a high-quality product before becoming fashionable, owes its fame solely to the simplicity and quality of its ingredients, beside their patient mathematical balancing, at which one of your (FP) has toiled tirelessly for years. A simple recipe endowed with forty years of experience and professionalism, of daily attention to raw products, without any kind of either preservative nor colouring, to gift a special taste through each and every cone and cup.

Natural flavours for all seasons

If we look at the ranking of European countries for ice cream amounts consumed each year, on top we see Austria, Germany and Scandinavian countries…not exactly warmer countries than Italy. This makes clear that the reason why winter is a period of so called “low season” for ice cream consumption is not an objective reason, but a purely cultural conditioning.
In the last few years, we have been noticing a trend inversion in this respect: Italy is getting free from the prejudice that ice cream is a cake fit only to hot weather.

And if, on one hand, it is undisputedly true that fruit ice cream has a hard time getting the spotlight from November through March, it is also true that we work very hard to widen the spectrum of our available choices, with the double goal to offer flavours more suited to cold months and, at the same time, not to exclude celiacs and lactose-intolerant people from the pleasures of ice cream.

Natural flavours for everyone, intolerant or not

Ever since the very beginning, with our confectionery, we have kept a close eye on celiacs: our venue has been offering for many years now our gluten-free pasticciotto. And ice creams are no less suited: only those flavours variegated with biscuits or cereals contain gluten. All the rest of our ice cream offer is strictly gluen-free. And if your intolerance is so severe than even one single crumb of biscuit can get you into trouble, no problem: just point it out to our employees and they will use a clean spoon to fill your cup or even your cone (for we have gluten-free cones as well).

To continue, we have steered clear of eggs for years in our ice cream recipes, except for such flavour like tiramisù, so that egg-intolerant people can feel safe when visiting us, because all other flavours contain neither yolk nor albumen.

And, finally, we have lactose intolerant people, whom we consider with no less attention. In fact, if it is true, on one hand, that gluten is much easier to exclude as an ice cream ingredient as compared to milk, it is true that rice milk, soy milk and -also for some time now- are available to produce simple flavours for those who cannot stand cow milk. With rice milk, we propose the white milk and chocolate flavour, whereas hazelnut, chocolate and gianduia are the hits on the soy side; dark chocolate features no milk at all, whereas all fruit flavour are good for intolerants, except for coconut!

It is always ice cream time, in summer evenings. At us, that’s true for everybody!

Our new strong points

We still want to spend a few lines about our new “bombers” in our window, those flavour that, in the short span of a few years, have reached the top positions in terms of sold volumes, some of them trumping our expectations.

The first place is for the pair with nutella ice and ovetto: the second is a mixture of black and white nutella ice. These are two cold and doughy flavours, prepared without a neutral base, as usually done for ice cream, but prepared right away with frozen nutellas to be eaten as such.

Second is pistacchiosa, which is nothing more than our traditional pistachio filled with layers of pistachio cream. In an era when the fruit which made the little Bronte famous worldwide is the most requested insertion all over the spectrum of cakes, the gluttony of this pistachio-based nutella of sorts has won the favour of people usually inclined towards other options.

The third position certainly belongs to wild cherries croccante, a base for white chocolate topped with wild cherries and brittle, which has in pistacchiosa its ideal partner in our customers’ cups and cones.

Last summer campaign

To finish off, this summer our BeHashtag marketing parters will launch ad advertising campaign totally focused on raising people’ awareness about our ice cream’s strong points. We are looking forward to watching it play out on our social media channels, while waiting to understand its perception by our customers..

Mirek and Franz