00 flour showdown: Is the secret to perfect pizza here--or someplace else?

Is it possible to get too fussy about flour for homemade pizza dough? I ask this as a guy who’s fussy about the flour for his homemade pizza dough. Is there a point of diminishing returns that matters only to the person instigating the flour fuss? Will anybody on the receiving end of the homemade pizza ever be able to tell the difference? Or even care?
 
Since a lot of newbies ask me for advice about flour (among other things), I thought we’d perform a little experiment. We held a flour showdown between four brands of that fabled flour of pizza perfection, “00” pizza flour.
 
The results may surprise you. Or you may just not care. (See? Already, the apathy begins. Wait until you taste the pizza!)

TL;DR? (If you're un-hip, that is digital hipster code for "Too Long, Didn't Read.") What you’re about to not read proves nothing. Just leave now. It’s safer that way. You won’t hate yourself at the end. You can just hate yourself now and get on with your day.
 
 
Whenever you begin to become serious about making pizza at home, something happens.

You are at some point told of that which is recognized far and wide as the holy grail: Caputo 00.
 
Caputo is a legendary flour producer in Naples. They have earned their status legitimately. They make an excellent product. It is considered a reference-standard product for making pizza as well as pasta.
 
Using their flour will turn your pizza to gold.
 
 
Or so you get led to believe.
 
As so many of my more beloved and evolved readers keep exhorting me to explain aloud about pizza ingredients: garbage in, garbage out!
 
I don’t bother going down that road for a couple of reasons.
 
 
1) Are you deeply interested in pursuing homemade pizza?
 
Then you’re going to figure it out for yourself. You require only a modicum of encouragement from moi.
 
And if you don’t figure it out, especially if you don’t care, who am I to stand in your way?
 
 
2) If you pay any attention to the nonsense that I write (and why wouldn’t you, as I’m the only pizza writer out there and I have a monopoly on the entire idea of homemade pizza across the interwebs), I make it pretty clear that the good stuff is the stuff to use in your pizza.
 
And I routinely recommend the stuff I use. It will happen again quite soon, in fact! Possibly even moments from now!
 
 
3) There’s already too much opinion involved.

For instance, I encourage King Arthur flour and Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes from California.
 
Despite that, there are plenty of other pizzamakers out there who will tell me I’m a slacker without even the taste God gave oysters.
 
 
So all that to say: use the best ingredients you can justify.
 
Some ingredients might seem too expensive.
 
But I use some of the best ingredients available at the supermarket level, and a 15-inch homemade pizza costs me about 5 bucks before electricity.
 
 
And I am not using 00 flour on anything like a regular basis.
 
But as a service to you, the budding home pizza geek, this seemed like it might be fun.
 
So I went out and grabbed four bags of readily available 00 pizza flour.
 
 
They include the legendary Caputo, Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur and Anna.

ABOVE: We rounded up all the usual suspects


And right away, reading labeling on the bags, you begin to get the idea that maybe some of these things are not like the others.
 
Anna and Caputo, the Italian flours, list the ingredients as “soft wheat flour.”
 
King Arthur says, “Hard Red Wheat Flour, Soft Wheat Flour.”
 
Bob’s Red Mill says, “Wheat flour.”
 
 
SIDEBAR: I exchanged a series of emails with customer service at Bob’s Red Mill.
 
I was able to ascertain that their 00 flour is indeed hard red wheat, but not whether it is winter or spring.
 
I thanked them and assured them that knowing it was hard red wheat was good enough for our purposes.
 
 
So, what does all that mean? And also, what does 00 mean? In fact, what is all of this about?
 
What follows is not even a basic primer in the simplest terms.
 
It is exhaustive by no means. It is a drive-by lesson in flour. Ready?

(If you already know what you're talking about or insist on a flour that can be purchased only by email with llama delivery, please skip ahead.)
 
 
In the United States, flours are categorized by their protein content relative to use.
 
Our flours run from cake and pastry flour on the protein-content low end, to bread and high-gluten flour on the high end, with all-purpose flour in the middle.
 
The higher-gluten products are often made with hard red wheat. The lower-gluten products are often made with soft white wheat.
 
 
None of the relative gluten contents are standardized. It varies from flour to flour and brand to brand.
 
As for Italian flours, they’re ranked along a range from 00, 0, 1 and 2. Of those, the finest grind is 00. The ultra-fine grind leads to better water absorption and a softer, more elastic dough. That's desirable quality for a pizza dough one is going to stretch. 
 
As with American flour, protein content in Italian flours varies widely, as do other details like ash content and extraction rate.
 
Extraction rate is how much of the wheat grain actually ends up in the flour.
 
Ash content speaks to a test involving that shows how much bran and germ remain in the flour vs. how refined it is.
 
 
Are you annoyed yet?
 
Welcome to the reason why I do not talk about flour on anything resembling an expert level.

I'm no expert and the subject is confusing.
 
You don’t want me, At-Home Pizza Fun Guy, to start throwing around terminology like “starch damage” and “endosperm.” (And in this political climate, the word "endosperm" can get a book banned from a local library.)
 
 
Here’s all we really need to know: 00 is widely regarded as the single best flour for pizza by people who don’t know enough to ask questions like:

“What kind of pizza are you making?”

“What kind of pizza do you like the most?”

“What temperature are you baking at?”

“Do you believe you get bragging rights for demonstrating Italian flour chauvinism?”
 
 
I made this 00-flour test very simple: Can I buy the flour in a supermarket?
 
And does the bag of flour have a pizza recipe on the side of it? (That ensures me that the purveyor intends the product to be used in a home oven by someone lacking any competence in pizzamaking.)
 
If the answer to both questions is yes, that’s all we need to know to make a pizza that answers a third question:
 
 
Do I like the pizza this flour makes in my home oven?
 
Now, if this were a truly accurate test, the pizza tasting would be conducted by a panel of judges using a double-blind study model that ensures impartiality on both the part of the study participants and the researchers.

I don't have that much time, money or smart friends.
 
I’m baking these pizzas by myself. My wife is tasting them with me. We have no ax to grind with anybody.
 
We figure as long as we’re not drunk, that’s good enough.
 
 
Moreover, the Fabulous Honey Parker has a very good palate.
 
Example: we were recently trying a new brand of Alabama-made, fully-cooked smoked sausage. We were tasting it cold, right from the package.
 
I said, “This is pretty good.”
 
She said, “This tastes like Band-Aids.”
 
 
And right away, I knew I was wrong. I immediately tasted the Band-Aids and recognized them. And it’s a flavor not even listed on the tasting wheel. (Or on the product's ingredients labeling. Thankfully.)
 
By the way, we’re talking plastic Band-Aids, not fabric. This is about latex infusion point.
 
Anyway, Honey does not cook, but is a monster in the tasting department.
 
 
So here’s how we’re doing this.
 
I’ve used my standard pizza dough recipe as found in Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have.

• I scaled down the normal batch by 75%, making a single dough ball of 280 grams from each of the flours.

 

• The doughs were made simultaneously, and cold-fermented for 72 hours.

 

• When making the pizza, each one was stretched to a diameter of 12 inches and made into a pizza marinara in order to give a full-flavored crust without the cheese getting in the way.

 

• Each pizza was topped with 100 grams of sauce, 15 grams of Parmigiano Reggiano, and a drizzle of Partanna organic extra-virgin olive oil.

 

• Each pizza was baked on steel in a 550-degree oven, and the steel was allowed to recover temperature between pies.

 

• Each pizza was removed after a bake of 4 to 5 minutes (based more on color rather than time), sliced and served.

 

Honey did not know which pizza was which, and even if she did, she could not have been bothered to have an existing opinion.
 
The only part of this about which she cares is whether it tastes like Band-Aids.
 
Or cat litter.
 
Or anything else unappetizing.
 
The commonality of all these pizzas, aside from the marinara-only flavor profile, was that each of them yielded a thin and crispy crust.
 
 
The only one of these flours I’d never used before was Bob’s Red Mill. But being a fan of their products generally, and of their Dark Rye Flour, Artisan Bread Flour and Organic All-Purpose Flour specifically, I assumed the 00 would be in a league with the other contenders.
 
None of these pizzas would be a disappointment.
 
 
This project was organized as well as you can expect from someone in a home kitchen with no TV cameras watching.
 
It was orderly.
 
There were no Alton Brown cutaway ovens or bubbling beakers with dry-ice fog. (Though it has happened in the past.)

For some reason, there was dry ice in the house that day. Always a photo opp. 
 

I baked and tasted pizzas in an orderly fashion. We kept it simple, ranking the results on a three-point scale: 1=bad, 2=good, 3=better.
 
 
Instead of a blow-by-blow replay, we’re going to cut right to the chase. Ready?
 
The first pizza out of the oven was Anna.
 
If you’re not familiar with Anna flour, it’s a product from Cento, the American purveyor of Italian food products who sells all those so-called “certified” San Marzano tomatoes in the can that bears no official DOP certification.
 
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
 
They usually taste pretty good. In a pinch, when I can’t get any of my favored US brands or DOP favorites, I will use those tomatoes. Cento spends a lot of time and effort on their website making their tomatoes sound legit. They may have something against the perceived protectionist nature of DOP. Or its high price. Or it's a racket. What do I know? As long as it tastes good.
 
But I digress.
 
The Anna crust was deemed to have “decent flavor.” The final score on the 3 scale was 2, good.

ABOVE: Maybe the Anna slice, maybe another. Frankly, they all look more or less the same. 


I admit that I was challenged by the pizza recipe on the bag. Using 16 ounces of dough that rises for a total of 45 minutes, you’re expected to bake a 14-inch pizza at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes. That doesn't strike me as best practices.
 
It’s also a very low hydration dough (about 56%) and a very low baking temp for pizza. I’ve not tried the recipe. I might just so I have something comical about which to do another blog post. Maybe it tastes great. 
 
But in the final analysis, using my standard dough recipe, Anna made a good and acceptable pizza.
 
 
Next up was King Arthur. 

In contrast to Anna, the pizza was determined by the taste tester to have “better texture, better flavor and better mouthfeel.” On the 3 scale, King Arthur scored a 3: Better.
 
The recipe on the King Arthur bag has its own challenges, but for a different reason than Anna’s. It’s a fairly high-hydration dough at about 73%. That would be challenging for a newbie to handle.
 
But maybe they figure anyone coming in for 00 flour has some chops. The low-yeast recipe with a 12- to 24-hour fermentation time and 500-degree baking temp uses more best practices than Anna’s.

ABOVE: All the slices remaining from the initial tasting. It was a long week of eating leftover pizza marinara. Not that there's anything wrong with that. 


In the wake of King Arthur came Bob’s Red Mill. The resulting pizza was deemed not quite as crispy or as flavorful as King Arthur, but still worthy. Scored a 2.75: Good on the way to better.
 
Also, the recipe on the bag is interesting. Maybe problematic for the newbie. The instruction for 3/4 cup of water and 2 to 2.5 cups of flour means a hydration percentage ranging anywhere from 56% to 72%.
 
A very dry dough or a very wet dough means very different pizzas. It calls for a one-hour rise and two 10-inch pizza pans—or two baking sheets. The 500-degree oven temp is good, but again: what kind of pizza is this? What form is it supposed to take?
 
If you're new, and you’ve made little to no pizza ever before, and you don’t know enough to understand the road to your final pizza product, it’s difficult to know what makes sense in a recipe like this. Maybe they're thinking it's a journey of discovery.
 
But I digress.
 
 
Up last and far from least, Caputo Chef’s Flour. 

To borrow from Caputo‘s American website, this flour is “perfect for doughs that require long leavening and recipes baked in your home oven.”
 
They also say that it works for bread and cakes. Since cake flour and bread flour in our country have distinctively different characteristics, it makes me wonder what kind of cakes they’re talking about.

But no matter. This is the 00 flour I found on the shelf in the supermarket, so it’s the 00 flour I’m using.
 
 
And I lied.
 
I said “a recipe on the bag” was one of my criteria.
 
This bag has no recipe. But I couldn’t have a conversation about 00 flour and not include the holy grail of 00 flour.
 
The good news is, at what appears to be their American website, Caputo Flour dot com, they have a whole bunch of recipes.
 
 
That includes one for “New York Style Pizza At Home” calling for this flour.
 
It’s a sensible newbie dough at about 60% hydration.

It calls for several hours of room-temp proof before an overnight fermentation.

The baking temp is 550 degrees.

They offer simple techniques for both traditional pizza and sheet-pan baking.

Yay!
 
But back to the taste testing.
 
 
How did our granddaddy of the 00 flours do? Caputo Chef’s Flour scored a 2.5. Comments? “Better tasting than Anna.”
 
So, in order of preference, from top to bottom,

1. King Arthur 00 Pizza Flour  
2. Bob’s Red Mill 00 Flour  
3. Caputo Chef’s Flour  
4. Anna Napoletana Tipo “00.”  

 

What does all this prove? NOTHING.
 
This test doesn’t mean a damn thing except that I’ve proven I can make pizza in my home oven using each of these flours and the results are all more or less the same.
 
And since our top two flours were red-wheat American product, it might also prove that Honey and I prefer pizza crust made from hard red American wheat because we eat a whole lot of pizza made from hard red American wheat. (I'm looking at you, King Arthur Bread Flour!)
 
If you bought any one of these four flours blind and used it in a viable recipe, you would probably be happy with it.
 
 
I admit I am partial to the King Arthur products for a variety of reasons.
 
One of them is that I’ve baked several pizzas with it and I like the crispy, crunchy, chewy result.
 
But I’ve also used Anna and Caputo products before. They’ve worked out well.
 
This is my first sortie using the Bob’s product, and it was good. And I like their other products. And I have a bag of flour left to use, so guess what.
 
I’m making pizza with it.

And with the others.
 
 
My advice to anyone who’s new to pizza: Don’t get caught up in your shorts.
 
Use a flour that’s suggested as appropriate for your preferred style of pizza.
 
Then work on that style of pizza using that flour.
 
Every time you make pizza is a learning experience.
 
If you want to dabble with flours, that’s fine.
 
But don’t feel like you need to do something the “right way” based on someone else's opinion. As long as you’re following best practices, with appropriate hydration levels and adequate fermentation times to develop complex flavors in your dough, you win!

Flour snobbery is stupid. And overpaying for flour because somebody told you you're doing it wrong is a bad idea. Do it because you tried it and prefer it. 
 
 
I’ve been working on a new recipe for a style of pizza that’s not well known. I can’t find an original recipe anywhere, so I’m developing my own.
 
And I’m not even thinking twice about whether to use King Arthur bread flour. I've got five bags of the stuff in my pantry. 
 
And the pizzas are turning out fantastic because I’m working it and improving it as I develop my style for this dough.
 
 
My wife at one point asked me to just stop making it.
 
She wasn't enjoying it much.
 
Just today, I made the latest iteration of the recipe with a thinner crust, different shortening (yes, shortening), a thicker sauce, and what you might deem too much cheese.
 
She took a bite and said, “God, that’s good.”
 
Or maybe I did. Whatever.
 
 
The point is that you are the pizzamaker.
 
As you learn, it’s good to follow proven recipes by competent pizzamakers.
 
But the secret ingredient that nobody can duplicate is you and how you make the pizza.
 
Feel free to experiment and learn what you like.
 
Just don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing it wrong if what you’re producing is right for you.
 
Enjoy whatever 00 flour you decide to use—or don't use any at all. It's your pizza. The magic is you. 

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Want to practice your own way to pizza greatness? You'll find all the simple steps to homemade pizza magic--and a single bread-flour recommendation--right inside my weird and award-winning pizzamaker’s manual, Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. If you’re just beginning your pizza-making journey, this book is a convenient place to start because it doesn’t force you to make any decisions beyond making a pizza. It’s a simple, step-by-step guide for getting from zero to pizza and amazing your friends and family. Learn more right here. ​ ​
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