Discovering The REAL Benefits Of Using 00 Flour For #Pizza

What is 00 flour? What's the difference between 00 and bread flour or all-purpose flour? Is 00 flour the best to make pizza? In this video we'll reply to these questions and I will give you some very little known information. Hello everybody, welcome back to Fabulous Pizza. It's been a while since my last full-length video but, you know, life got in the way and I had some creative block. And speaking of which, thank you very much to all the lovely people who replied to this post. Your suggestions are now in my to-do list, stay tuned. But let me dive into the topic, 00 flour. You can also say 00 if you want. First of all, let me tell you what 00 flour is not and hold tight here because I'm going 00 is not very finely milled flour. At this point there's a high chance you want to shut down the video or laugh at me. Bear with me, let me explain. 00 is just a name we Italians give to a certain type of flour. It's a category the flour falls into. The other names and categories are mostly numbers, so there's 00 in Italian, then uno, due, and integrale, that means whole meal. These five different types of flour are, in order of refinement, with 00 and integrale being the streams. 00 is the most filtered and it contains just the seed, no germ, no bran, nothing. Then type 0 is less filtered, types uno and due are less and less filtered, while integrale is not filtered at all and it also contains wheat germ and bran. This is why its color is dark and brownish. But you don't have to take my word for granted. In fact, this codification comes from an Italian law. It's called the DPR, which is short for Decree of the President of the Republic and it was emitted in the year 2001. This decree gives some info on how to classify the flours and its features, its qualities are precisely indicated. There is no mention about milling, about the size of the grains, about the baking temperature or recommended style of pizza and all the misinformation we see everywhere online, no mention at all. But again, don't take my word for granted. Now I will show you quickly the main part of this DPR and at the end of the video I'll show you how to find the test of the law on an Italian institutional website together with some more translations. This might be boring for some of you right now, this is why I just decided to put it at the end of the video. For now let's focus on this table here. This is super relevant for our purpose and knowledge as pizza makers. There are five columns with the different features of the flour. First column, type and denomination, where you will find the names I already mentioned from 00 to Integrale. Second column is the maximum humidity, all the fields are filled with the same value. Third and fourth column are the amount of ashes, it's a percentage and the minimum is just for wholemeal flour. Finally the fifth and last column is my favourite because it tells us the minimum percentage of proteins for that particular type of flour. You probably know we talk about proteins all the time. Look carefully and you will see that any 00 flour can have as low as 9% proteins, which is pretty low. I bet that your average bread flour has at least 11.5% proteins, enough to make a decent pizza. Like the ones you find on my Instagram feed for example, you should find me there and follow me. So this is the first difference between bread flour and 00 flour, protein content. I've never seen any bread flour with just 9% proteins, while I see many 00s with 9% proteins. The difference is smaller for most all-purpose or plain flours, as they usually have less proteins, but at the same time I've seen plain flour with less than 9% proteins. Now I have to ask you a favour. I think that the info I gave you so far is not common at all. I've never seen it anywhere else and pardon me if I sound arrogant, but there is loads of misinformation out there. We keep doing and repeating over and over things we were told by someone and we don't even question them anymore. So if today you learned something new, please like this video and share it with your pizza lovers friends. This will help them and me because I will be able to reach more people and hopefully stay motivated to make more videos. But back on track now. I want to give you some food for thoughts. Let's consider a nice crop of wheat from the USA for example. Let's split this crop. Half will stay home, it will be milled and it will become a nice strong bread flour, 12% proteins, like the one you use many times. We will send the other half to Italy, which happens all the time because Italy imports lots of wheat, we consume more than we produce. So half of our initial crop will be milled in Italy and transformed into a nice 00 flour with the same 12% proteins and it will end up on the shelves along with all the other kinds of flour allowed by our DPR. So which flour will be the best to make pizza? Will you decide only depending on the name or will you choose 00 rather than bread flour just because someone said it? Maybe a self-proclaimed pizza guru who doesn't know what 00 means? Geez, I do sound arrogant here. I want to be brave, I won't change the video. By the way, of course I'm oversimplifying here. I'm not taking into account the whole milling process, but I think it's fair to say that those two batches of flour are the same, with more or less the same qualities, despite their names being different. Only their name is different. In general, if you ask me if a 00 flour is the best for pizza, it's more likely I will say no rather than yes. Before I decide if I want to make pizza with a certain 00 flour, I will always check the protein content and look for at least 12%, which is enough for the procedure I follow, the one you will find here. In conclusion, to make it very simple and cut the long story short, what is 00 flour? Well, it's flour, ground soft wheat. 00 is just one of the names we use in Italy. Then what's the difference between 00 and bread flour or all-purpose flour? The protein content is relevant here, 9% being the minimum amount for 00. And finally, is 00 flour the best to make pizza? Not necessarily. In general, you will need one with a decent amount of proteins, so you can afford a fairly long fermentation and all the stuff I always suggest in my videos. Before I leave, remember that you can continue watching to see how to have a look at the DPR I mentioned throughout this video. If you have any questions, then drop a comment down here. You know I reply to all of them, even the nasty ones. If you're not going to watch, then it's time to say goodbye. Hope this helps. See you next time. Hello, I'm back. Let's find this famous DPR. This is the website of the Ministry of Agricultural Policies. Please check the description of the video to get the link. I will look for our DPR, which is number 187. It's already here, of course. The year is 2001. Here are the results. We need this one. Let's click. And now we can download the PDF. This is the intro. Let's scroll down to the interesting part. Here. Article number one. Farine di grano tenero, which means soft wheat flours. First the definitions. Soft wheat flour is the product obtained from the milling and filtering of soft wheat, freed from the impurities. Then wholemeal. The product obtained directly from the milling of soft wheat, freed from the impurities. So there's no filtering at all. This is the table we've seen during the video. See if you want to take a screenshot as a reminder. Again, the link is in the description of the video. Understandably, there's no English version, but if you really feel like studying, let's say, then now you have an excuse to learn a few Italian words, not just ciao, mamma mia, ciao bella, and so on. See you next time. Ciao!