How to Steam Milk

Greg Suekoff: Hi, I am Greg Suekoff, we are here at Caffe Pronto Coffee Roastery, learning how to make the perfect Latte. Now that we know what it takes to extract perfect shots of espresso, the only other ingredient we need to make the perfect Latte is well textured milk. Now steaming milk may seem like a very straight forward process, but with a little bit technique you can really add a nice texture to the milk that brings out a very dessert like quality to the drink. Here's how we do it. You always want to start with cold milk and a cold steaming pitcher, I am using a whole milk, it's what I prefer. I think it steams the best and taste the best as well. You want to get in a habit of trying to pour the right amount of milk for the drink, so as to not have a lot of waste. Now what we are trying to do here is create a velvety milk foam called microfoam. We are going to start by completely submerging the tip of the wand in the milk and turning it on. We will then lower the tip of the -- lower the milk pitcher because the tip of the wand is near the surface of the milk, that's going to introduce air into the milk. We are going to do this till the milk starts to get warm to the touch, about a 100 hundred. Now we are going to try to make the milk spin around on itself, until we reach the proper temperature of a 140 degrees. Upon finishing streaming the milk you want to always wipe your steam on immediately and purge out any access that has escaped. So the result of this process is a very finely bubbled microfoam. So you can see the milk is very shiny, you can't even see any bubbles on the surface. Now after you pour the milk you are going to see it separate into a foam. So if you watch now, all the heavy part of the milk is going to sink and the light part of the milk is going to rise up to create a delicious foam underneath your drink. So, with perfectly extracted shots of espresso and well textured milk, you have thing you need to make the perfect Latte. I am going to introduce to you now how to free pour Latte art.