When making pizza dough at home, the type of wheat flour you use may not seem like a big deal, but it will affect the dough. Of course, when making pizza dough, we want our crust to have some chewiness, but the choice of flour depends on the type of crust you're after, whether it's a thin New York-style crust, a chewy Neapolitan-style pizza, or a deep-dish pie.
When trying to decide which flour is best for you and your pizza, it’s important to understand the differences between the various types of flour, including all-purpose flour, bread flour, pastry flour, and cake flour. Each flour will behave differently when stretching into a circle, and specific types are best for specific styles of crust.
Understanding Gluten Content
Flours have different textures, depending on their gluten content. For example, cake and pastry flours are very soft and fine and almost feel like silk, while bread flour is a bit coarser. Cake and pastry flours have very low gluten content (eight to 10 percent), making them “soft” flours, while bread flour has a high gluten content (12 to 14 percent), making it a “hard,” or “strong” flour. All-purpose flour is a combination of “hard” and “soft” flours and contains 10 to 12 percent gluten.
Gluten is a protein that, when wet, creates an elastic system throughout the dough. It is what gives bread its chewy, springy nature, and therefore the more gluten in the flour, the chewier the bread will be. This is why cake and pastry flours are used for delicate baked goods—no one wants to eat a chewy cake.
Just as it sounds, all-purpose flour can be used for almost everything. It will taste good in most pizza dough recipes, but it can sometimes be more difficult to stretch out as it may tear more easily. All-purpose flour is great for Sicilian and deep-dish pizza crusts and will also do well in thin crust, New York-style, and Neapolitan-style pizzas. Your average supermarket brand is adequate, but many swear by King Arthur Flour.
Bread Flour
This is most people’s go-to for home pizza baking. It’s easy to find in any grocery store (again, King Arthur Flour is a favorite brand), is affordable, and adds some extra oomph and crispiness to thin crust and New York-style pizzas. It will make your crust crispy on the outside and chewy and textured on the inside.
Bread flour won’t tear as you stretch it out, but it can sometimes be hard to form into the desired shape, continually springing back because of the high gluten content. If you are interested in even higher gluten content, look for King Arthur Flour’s Sir Lancelot High-Gluten Flour with 14 percent gluten. It's sold online on the King Arthur Flour website.
Caputo Tipo '00' Flour
If you want to make Neapolitan-style pizza, which is thin in the middle and puffs up around the rim, seek out the more expensive Caputo Tipo "00" flour. The “00” refers to the texture of the flour: Tipo "00" is the finest grind you can get, 0 falls in the middle, and 1 is the roughest. This fine grind, along with a 12 1/2 percent gluten content, produces a crust that is chewy but not rubbery, with just the right amount of puff on the edges that gets charred in some spots in the oven.
Caputo flour can be found in Italian or specialty grocery shops or online. You can also try King Arthur Flour’s Italian-Style Flour, the “American clone of Italian '00' flour,” available on King Arthur Flour’s website. Be aware that if your oven does not perform well with temperatures over 500 F, the Caputo Tipo "00" flour may not brown and char sufficiently for a good Neapolitan-style pizza, so it’s probably not worth the high price tag.
This is why bread flour is a better choice than all-purpose flour for pizza dough--it's 12-14% gluten content allows the dough to develop a very strong gluten mesh during the resting period. In contrast, highly refined all-purpose flour may only have a 9% gluten content.
The best flour for making Deep-Dish Pizza Dough is all-purpose flour. In bakeries and pizzerias, Pizza Flour is often used because it is a high-protein flour that produces a light and airy crust. However, all-purpose flour will also work well for Deep-Dish Pizza Dough.
The secret to great dough isn't kneading or throwing . . .
“Pizza dough made at home should be 50 percent water. Pizza needs to cook longer in a home oven, which means the dough needs to be more hydrated.” But don't let it to get soggy . . .“It's important to spread the dough very well and very evenly,” explains Falco.
Sometimes when too much flour is added, dough will come out hard and stiff. This can be caused by overworking the dough either by hand or with a roller. Overworking dough will pop all the tiny bubbles that make pizza crust so airy and fluffy once cooked. The hard crust can also be caused by the type of flour you use.
The all purpose helps prevent the dough from sticking and the semolina flour is slightly coarser and helps the pizza slide off the peel and on to the baking steel. If you don't have semolina, you can use 100% all-purpose flour.
And these flours have just the right amount of protein content - around 12.5% for pizza baking. Both Tipo 0 and Tipo 00 are also approved by the AVPN (The True Neapolitan Pizza Association), which manages the international regulations for Neapolitan pizza.
All-purpose flour is made up of both soft and hard wheat, while type 00 flour is made with soft wheat. Type 00 is known for its superfine texture—a product of its specialized milling. This soft, powder-like flour is perfect for creating that irresistibly airy, crispy crust.
Flour is the main ingredient in pizza dough, and the type you use can have a big effect on the end result. All-purpose flour will work fine, but if you want a chewier crumb and a better hole structure, you should consider buying yourself some high protein bread flour.
If your pizza dough is quickly snapping back or difficult to stretch, your dough is too tight. Cover your dough with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. After a bit of rest, the gluten in the dough will relax, making the process of stretching much easier.
Too little yeast and your dough won't rise enough, and the pizza base will taste bland. Use too much yeast and your dough may over-ferment. Tell-tale signs are your dough expanding too much or tasting and smelling a bit sour, with an almost alcoholic aftertaste (the yeast produces alcohol as it ferments).
Overmixing your dough leads to a dough ball that will not want to stretch and will keep snapping back to a smaller size. Overmixing is not the only thing that leads to snapping back. Over balling your dough will also contribute.
Pizza dough that has been left to rise for too long, or has been over-proofed, can potentially collapse. The gluten becomes overly relaxed, and the end product will be gummy or crumbly instead of crisp and fluffy.
You can buy San Felice Tipo 00 Flour for pizza at Wholesale Italian Food. What is this? The difference between all-purpose flour and tipo 00 is that the tipo 00 hydrates very easily as it is so fine so will find yourself adding more water to your dough than you usually do.
What kind of flour makes the best pizza base bread flour or all purpose flour? You can use bread flour or all-purpose flour, both are delicious. Bread flour would make a chewier crust. I personally prefer all-purpose even for bread, so I only need one bag of flour.
The best approach to achieve a light, airy crust is to stretch the dough. Yeast produces gas bubbles, which increase volume and fluffiness. Those air pockets in the dough won't disappear no matter how much you knead it. It will shuffle them about, merging smaller air pockets into larger ones.
This is the gold standard of pizza flours by which most others are judged, but there's quite a bit of confusion as to exactly what it is. You'll read in countless sources that Italian Tipo "00" flour, like the Caputo, is a "soft wheat flour," with a low protein content.
Cornmeal can be a very effective dusting choice. Some pizza chefs actually prefer the coarse, gritty texture cornmeal adds to the bottom of the crust. Made from durum wheat, semolina flour is coarser than regular flour so it's slower to absorb water.
New York pizza dough, on the other hand, is generally made from American bread flour. Also high in protein, it readily develops gluten (the protein matrix that gives bread structure).
The simple ingredients are mostly pantry staples. However, I would definitely recommend using High Grade Flour over ordinary flour. High Grade Flour has a higher content of gluten which makes the crust chewier.
Introduction: My name is Fr. Dewey Fisher, I am a powerful, open, faithful, combative, spotless, faithful, fair person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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