Read How Ice Cream Is Made: Ice cream is a frozen blend of sweetened cream and air with added flavoring. This is how it is made commercially.

Necessary Ingredients:

Dairy products, including milk, cream, and butter fat

Sugar

Eggs

Flavoring

Approved additives to prevent ice crystals during the production process

Production Steps:

Step 1: To start, the ingredients are carefully measured and then combined together. The dairy ingredients, solids, and additives are blended well to ensure the liquid and dry components are completely mixed.

Step 2: Next, the mix is pasteurized. This means it is heated to high temperatures to remove any bacteria which could be found in the raw ingredients. Pasteurization can occur at 155°F for 30 minutes or 175°F for 25 seconds. The temperatures used to pasteurize ice cream need to be higher than those used for milk because the mixture includes high-fat dairy sources, sweeteners, and egg yolks.

Step 3: Following pasteurization, the ice cream mix is homogenized. This occurs when the fat globules in the cream are broken down into smaller parts through vigorous mixing. Once homogenized, the ice cream should be very smooth and uniform, meaning free of bubbles. Now the ice cream will be easier to whip and will not melt as fast.

Step 4: The next step is to let the ice cream mixture stand for at least four hours. During this time, the fat cools and forms crystals.

Step 5: A special barrel freezer is then used to gradually freeze the ice cream. The machine also pumps clean air into the mix. This keeps the ice cream soft and allows it to absorb the different flavorings. Without the air, the mixture would become as hard as an ice cube.

Step 6: During freezing, flavoring can be added. Ice cream flavors have moved on from plain vanilla and chocolate to include hundreds of combinations using fruit, nuts, candy, cookies, and other baked goods.

Step 7: Finally, the ice cream is packaged and put into a blast freezer where the temperature is between -22 to -40 Fahrenheit.

Select the sentence that best explains why Step 5 is important.

a
The air that is pumped into the mix is needed to keep the mixture soft and able to absorb flavorings.

b
The special barrier freezer is necessary for quickly freezing the mixture, so it does not become too soft.

c
The machine pumps warm air into the mixture, which keeps the ice cream from becoming too hard.

d
The cold air pumped into the mix creates a rapid freezing process that is necessary for the ice cream mixture to absorb the flavorings.