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The list of excellent food and drink that originated in Italy is endless, and the caffè latte—shortened to just “latte” in English—has, over the past 20 years, become a staple at coffee shops and restaurants. The short of it, a latte is a coffee drink made with espresso and steamed milk, often accented with latte art that keeps getting more elaborate: flowers, swirly patterns, hearts, skulls, faces and holiday symbols, all made by pouring milk on the coffee from a specific height and moving the pitcher to combine the milk foam and crema, which is the brownish foam that forms on the top of freshly made espresso.
We could get into some of the extreme latte trends making headlines lately, like the matcha latte, infused with ground green tea; the aesthetically pleasing blue algae latte; lavender lattes; lattes infused with botanicals; or detox charcoal lattes. Nothing against those more exotic versions, but perhaps we can reserve that for another post. These days, many people seem to crave tasty yet approachable classics, so I set out discover what makes a good, traditional latte, and a couple of experts from local coffee roasters provided insight.
Anodyne Coffee Roasting’s Olivia Stemwell is the retail liaison in charge of training the baristas and retail staff. She’s based at Anodyne’s Walker’s Point café, but she also travels to their locations in Bay View, Wauwatosa, the Milwaukee Public Market and their kiosk at Miller Park during baseball season to show Anodyne’s staff how to make great lattes. Stemwell believes the perfect latte has beautiful latte art on top, and not just for aesthetics, but mainly because latte art is a barista’s reward for achieving perfectly steamed and textured milk.
“In my opinion, properly textured milk encompasses what I call the three ‘S’s’—silky, smooth and sexy,” Stemwell said. “If your latte has those three things, you’ll get effortless latte art on top. Customers enjoy watching it, and the barista enjoys pouring it as well, because it exemplifies skill and devotion to what we’re doing.”
Another aspect of a good latte, Stemwell added, is not too much foam; otherwise, you’re treading into cappuccino territory. “A good latte has the perfect amount of foam and a beautifully extracted shot of Mind Tonic—our house espresso at Anodyne,” she noted.
Jessica Sheridan is the tasting and roasting technician for Stone Creek Coffee, which has cafés throughout Milwaukee, as well as Chicago and Madison. "Put very simply, a great latte embodies the harmonic synergy between the craft of well steamed milk and properly pulled shots of espresso,” she says.
So, there’s the basic art and science behind that cup of creamy caffeinated goodness we know and enjoy as the latte. What do you believe makes the perfect latte, and why?
