Type “00” Flour

[Wendy]

Hi to everyone. My name is Wendy. I used to be known as "Happy One" on the old Baking Circle. I have enjoyed reading a lot of the posts and seeing so many of the recipes from the old baking circle. I learned a lot of wonderful type from you bakers. I bought some Caputos flour on amazon, type 00 flour. It wasn't the pizza flour or pasta flour. My baking question is, have any of you bakers used this type of flour for basic baking such as cakes or cookies? I made some pizza dough with it and the crust turned out delicious. I did make a loaf of rye bread tonight and have the dough in the refrigerator till morning when I can bake it. I'm hoping the bread turns out as good as the pizza did. Any information from you bakers would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to reading more of the posts from everyone. Take care and happy baking to all.
Wendy

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[Mike Nolan]

There are so many different aspects by which flour can be defined that most online descriptions of it remind me of the old story about the 7 blind men and the elephant: Each blind man was accurately describing one important part of the elephant, but none of them were describing the whole elephant.

For the last several weeks I've been reading Wheat Flour Milling by Posner & Hibbs, the standard textbook on the subject, and though I'm only 2 chapters in, I'm already pretty overwhelmed by all the material. (People can and do earn PhDs in flour milling.)

I'm probably going to write an article (possibly several) on what I've learned later this fall, so I won't go into it in depth at this time.

As I understand it at this point, type 00 flour describes the granularity of the flour, ie, how finely ground it is. That doesn't tell you what kind of wheat it came from, what protein levels that wheat has or how much of the bran and germ are still left in the flour, and those are all things that affect how the flour will perform in various types of baking. (There can be other factors as well, such as how the flour has been treated before or after milling.)

Basically, Italian flours come in Type 0, Type 00 and Type 000, the more zeroes, the finer the grind. Type 0 is a coarse flour, type 00 is probably fairly close to most American AP flours for grind (though some sources say it is a bit finer than the average American AP flour, more like 'southern' flours such as White Lily), and type 000 is very finely ground, the closest equivalent in the USA is probably cake flour.

Different brands of Italian 00 flour will be made from different types of wheat, and that will affect how the flour performs in various types of baking.

The suitability of Caputo Type 00 flour for pizza, which it is how sources like Amazon may label it for marketing purposes, is an entirely separate matter. If you follow the discussions on pizza-oriented forums like Peter Reinhart's Pizza Quest, you will find some people who insist that you must use a very high protein content flour for pizza and others who insist that you should use a lower-than-average protein content flour. Both factions have valid arguments for their points of view, but that's because they have different opinions as to what pizza crust 'should' be.

Peter Reinhart's book American Pie gives a number of different crust recipes, from various types of pizza across the USA and around the world, and calling for various types of flour. I've tried several of them, and I have to say they were ALL delicious!

[BakerAunt]

Welcome, Wendy! It's great to see you posting here. My favorite flours for pizza are semolina and duram wheat flour--the KAF Ultra-Thin Crust recipe.

[Italiancook]

Hi, Wendy! Welcome aboard. I have KAF Italian-style flour. I can't recall if they also call it 00, but I think it's similar. I haven't used it for cakes or cookies. I have used it for Crostata that has a lattice top. Compared to regular AP flour, I much prefer the "00". The dough is just as easy and difficult to work with as AP flour. The finished "00" crostatas are much more tender. It's probably just our imagination, but we think the KAF Italian-style "00" yields a product as good as Ferrara in Chicago. Certainly, it's closer with my recipe than AP flour.

Now that you have brought up using it for cakes and cookies, I may try it with a cake. If I do, I'll let you know, and if you try first, please let us know.

[Mike Nolan]

I suspect most Italian flour is Type 00, but that really doesn't tell you what it's good for. In general, European wheat strains are lower in protein than wheat grown in the USA and Canada. (But there are 'soft' wheat strains grown in North America and some harder/higher protein wheat strains grown in Europe.)

It may be that the information on the package, like sample recipes, is the best guide to what type of baked goods it is best for.

American nutritional information labeling is not very helpful for things like flour, because of serving size and rounding error. If the nutrition label says it has 4 grams of protein in a 30 gram serving, that really means it has somewhere between 3.50 and 4.49 grams of protein, which means it could be anywhere from 11.6% protein to 14.96% protein. 3 grams of protein means somewhere between 8.33% and 11.6% protein.

Europeans measure protein content differently than they do in the USA, just to make matters even more interesting. In Europe they analyze the flour as if it was completely dry, in the USA flour is analyzed based on a 14% moisture content. So a flour that Europeans would measure as 10.46% protein would measure as 9% in the USA.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by htfoot.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by htfoot.

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