The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

flour substitutes

JCinSAT's picture
JCinSAT

flour substitutes

HI,

Going to try and work on my pizza dough skills.

Being in the US means paying a big $$$$ for Italian 00 flours. I have a quite a bit of  1st clear flour (KAF brand) on hand.  (for rye bread)

What if I mixed it 50/50 with AP?

intend to do a poolish version of neopalitin, though I know I won't get the nice char, cause just using my home oven.

Thanks

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

Welcome to the TFL gang!

What's your previous experience in pizza making?  US pizzerias?  Any foreign experience?  

What flours have you previously used for pizza?

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I went overboard on pizza cookbooks. I have Gemignani's The Pizza Bible, Reinhart's American Pie and Perfect Pan Pizza, Forkish's Elements of Pizza, Lahey's My Pizza,  Baugniet's 500 Pizzas and Flatbreads, Hertzberg's/Francois' Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day, and a few lesser known ones that I picked ip cheaply.

And here's my point: the flour depends on the style of pizza.   Reinhart uses mainly AP flour. Gemignani uses 12% protein bread flour, 14% protein All Trumps, and 12% Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour.

You can now also get American-made flour that is close to the Italian 00 style.  www.Centralmilling.com/store  has a 00 style pizza flour that carries the Gemignani name.  

General Mills also makes a Neapolitan style pizza flour, not malted, but you have to buy a 50 pound bag.  https://www.generalmillscf.com/products/category/flour/hard-winter-wheat/gold-medal-neapolitan-50lb

There are many opinions about what to use for any given style, too.

AP may be good enough for short rise doughs made with commercial yeast; but higher protein may be better for long rises with sourdough.

An interesting thing I learned from Gemignani is that you can add diastatic malt powder to American white (refined) flour (which is almost always malted anyway) to increase the charring in a 500 F max home oven.  The diastatic malt is a neccesity if you want to bake unmalted Italian 00 flour in a home (500 degree max) oven.

He also has a cool thing using two baking steels in a home oven, and getting a top char by finishing the pizza on the top rack under the broiler.

Gemignani's The Pizza Bible is currently $9.99 for the Kindle ebook, and about $19 used, very good condition, including shipping, at Amazon.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JYWW490?tag=froglallabout-20

TFL is a great web site for bread.  Though if your focus is on pizza, you may want to also check out www.pizzamaking.com