What is the best flour for making pizza? If you wish to cook like a real Italian pizzaiolo, you better know which ingredients to use. Pizza makers and chefs have different opinions about this point. There are more and more options of pizza crusts popping up at Italian restaurants, and you could feel a bit confused about the preparation of pizza dough. This pizza flour guide will help you decide how to approach this baking adventure.
What is the best flour for pizza making?
The two most frequently used flours to prepare pizza doughs are bread flour and all-purpose flour. The best type of flour depends on the style of pizza you want to cook and taste. Each flour is characterized by unique traits that give different results in texture and taste. The amount of gluten in the blend is an important element in the distinction among various flours. You can distinguish:
- gluten-free flours;
- pastry and cake flour with low gluten content (8 to 10%);
- bread flour and all-purpose flour with high gluten content (12 to 14%).
Why is gluten so important? This protein creates elasticity and gives a stretchy consistency. It also helps to create the gas that makes the dough rise.
Best flour for pizza: all-purpose flour
This product is ideal if you want to achieve a thin pizza crust. This is what we call the Roman-style pizza or even thin New York-style crust. With the all-purpose flour, the dough doesn’t rise as much as dough containing a big amount of gluten. Remember that, sometimes it may be harder to stretch out this product compared to others because it tends to tear more easily.
Best flour for pizza: bread flour
Most people use bread flour to prepare the homemade pizza dough. This product creates a very structured dough letting to make a good stretching and rising. The result is a soft, thick, and extremely fluffy dough with crispy edges. Bread flour is easy to handle than most flours, as the gluten stretches without tearing. On the other hand, this dough is very “springy” and tries to bounce back to shape after you stretch it out. This flour is perfect if you want a chewier, thin-crust pizza. The crust will be crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.
Gluten-free flours
Almond flour is useful to create a gluten-free pizza dough. It’s easy to cook and perfect for novice bakers. If you are following a keto diet, also consider that almond flour is low-carb. The typical low-density of the flour and its high-fat content call for different portions than other flour recipes. For this reason, it’s better to follow step by step an almond flour pizza crust recipe.
Moreover, if you add some whey protein to the recipe, your pizza dough will retain its structure and won’t break or crack when you stretch it.
Tipo “00”: best flour to make pizza that puffs around the rim
If you want to make a thin pizza in the middle that puffs up around the rim, you should buy the more expensive Tipo “00” flour. The numbers of the name refer to the texture of the flour:
- Tipo “00” is the finest grind,
- 0 falls is a middle grind,
- 1 is the roughest grind.
This fine grind, along with a gluten content of 12 1/2 percent, yields a chewy crust that isn’t rubbery, with an average amount of edge puff that chars in parts inside the oven.
Buy the best flour for pizza online
If you go to your local grocery store, you’ll see a variety of alternatives of flours, and if you want to prepare an authentic Italian-style pizza, one option is to buy flour online.
While writing my article, I accidentally discovered a small family-run business that sells Italian ingredients and raw materials abroad. It is called Destination Abruzzo and they manage an online shop where you can buy many typical products of Italian and regional cuisine, such as Farabella Gluten-Free Bread and Pizza Flour Mix.
I thought I’d interview the owners of the company, listen to the podcast here:
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