Explanation of geek info for each flour
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W: indicates how strong a flour is measured in an Alveograph. For pizza, you basically only work with strong flour with a w from 260 and up to 380 in some cases. The higher the number, the stronger the flour. In our opinion, perhaps the most important measure to take into account. The stronger the flour, the more water it can usually handle. It also generally tolerates longer fermentation times. Strong flours are often used for Pizza canotto (indirect doughs). However, the Alveograph only measures short-term fermentation with a hydration of 50% if it is not measured in an AH Alveograph, and therefore you have to supplement with your own tests, which you can read about below.
Spread test: Further on, we will indicate the difference in the strength of the dough with a certain flour so that you know how to regulate the amount of water. The biggest difference between flours is how well it absorbs water and how well it retains strength over time. This is important as the vast majority of people ferment their Neapolitan pizza dough for longer than 12 hours at room temperature, which can be called long fermentation. We thus supplement the limitations of the alveograph here. Perhaps the most important information about each flour. It takes time to get the results, but hang in there, it will come.
Water absorption capacity: Something that we discovered is extremely related to W is how much water the flour can absorb. Sometimes a certain flour can absorb a lot of water but still not be that strong in the end when we check spread tests after 24 hours. Therefore, it is completely inappropriate to check how the final result on the pizza will be and compare flours against each other if the strength of the dough performed in a spread test is not the same. So when we decide for example how much swoosh a flour gives, we always adjust the amount of water in the dough to such a level that we achieve the same diameter in a spread test as we do with the recipe we are currently baking with. Mostly then similar to the recipe in our book. Caputo flours usually absorb a lot of water and then you have to lower the amount of water in most other flours to get a comparable dough. When we then achieve similar results in spread tests, yes, then we bake and check the results. We will gradually present more accurate values for the different flours, but this kind of thing must be tested over time in controlled forms. However, we have already issued guidelines for how much more or less water you need to use to achieve similar strength in the final dough that you usually have and like. As a basis for these guidelines, we have used our own tests and a farinograph.
Sometimes you read that a certain flour is weak and difficult to bake with, but often you don't think about the water absorption capacity. If you take this into account, the flours become more and more comparable. It is only here that you can see clear differences in the swoosh and color above all. For example, if you use Caputo pizzeria, which you usually get good results with, but want to try Piantoni red sack, which on paper has similar properties. If you do not change the amount of water, you will be shocked by how limp the Pianton dough became and it will be hell to bake as you are used to the Caputo dough, which is stronger at the time of baking. Instead of screwing up the Piantoni, you should instead give it a chance where you adjust the amount of water with, say, 4-4.5% less than you usually have when baking with the Caputo flour. You will see that the Piantoni flour behaves more like the Caputo dough on the bench and you can now make a good comparison. So as we often say, it's a good idea to stop fussing about how much water you have in the dough, it's less important than most people think. The strength of the dough is 10 times more important.
Water absorption in Farinograph
Caputo Tipo “00” = 61.6% Caputo Nuvola Super = 63.9%
Molino Pasini Verde = 58.8% Molino Piantoni MD = 57%
Molini Pivetti Professional = 59.1% Costa d`Amalfi =58.5%
Molino Pasini Marrone = 58.7% Molino Piantoni LG = 58.2%
Direct :VS: Indirect doughs: We also state if we personally use the flour for direct doughs or for indirect doughs that use some type of predough/biga/poolish. So for doughs that aim for a lot of swoosh at the edge. Read more about pizza canotto here . This is a modern evolution of Pizza Napoletana which originated mainly in the Caserta area. The inventors of the style even want to go so far as to call it Pizza Casertano. By direct doughs, we mean a dough where you mix all the ingredients directly from the start, such as the recipe in our book. This is how you bake the traditional Pizza Napoletana and it has been done this way since it was invented in the 17th century. One thing we should add about flour for direct doughs is that by modifying the recipe a little we can personally achieve basically equivalent results as the flours are relatively similar. However, we work on this full time, so of course it is easier for us. So our recommendation is to try different flours in your way of baking and making the dough and see what you like best.
Tipo (xx): indicates how white the flour is. That is, how much shell parts have been removed. This is stated in Tipo and then some number after. This does not indicate anything about the performance of the flour or the like, only how white it is. Tipo 00 means that the flour is very white, such as a standard "wheat flour special" in Sweden. Tipo 0 means it's a little darker and so on. Within pizza flours, the differences are so small that you hardly notice it, but you can of course argue that a tipo 1 flour is more useful than a tipo 00 flour if you want. Many people think that tipo 00 means that the flour is good for pizza, but this is not the case. There are lots of different strong tipo 00 flours that absolutely do not work for Pizza Napoletana.?Many also seem to think that tipo 00 means that the flour is finely ground, but that is not true either. However, you can say that it is fine-tuned. The grains themselves are no smaller if that's what you thought. So bust these myths out of your hood now,, come on :)!!!!
P/L: is often stated but it's always between 0.5-0.6 for Neapolitan pizza flours so it's not that relevant in our opinion and can be ignored.
Protein/gluten %: are we messing around as there are a lot of different gluten types that perform differently. A flour with low gluten can sometimes be stronger than one with high gluten, so you should not stare blindly at this.
Fall rate: The fall rate of the flours is something we don't write about, as all the flours on our site have a fall rate that is adapted to be baked very quickly and hard as you do with the Neapolitan pizza. The case number, which stands for how quickly the dough converts starches into sugar, is a contributing reason why Swedish flours do not work for Neapolitan pizza. They have too low a case number, which means that sugar forms quickly in the dough and leads to the pizza burning too quickly in a 500° hot oven. The fall numbers in flours intended for Neapolitan pizza are often over 400, while Swedish flours stay around 300.