Stephen Yasko

I recently got a wood fired pizza oven from Alfa just out side of Rome.  I'll tell you more about the Alfa oven in another post, but here I want to talk about the perfect flour for making pizzas.  

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of cold water when making pizza dough and letting it rise slowly in the refrigerator  before bringing it up to room temperature before using.

Using the right pizza dough flour is important too.  A 00 (double zero) is very important too.  This flour has extra glutens and is milled extremely fine.  The combination makes a smooth, elastic and slow rising pizza dough that will bring you a perfect crust every time. 

You most likely will not find find this flour in your supermarket.  You're going to have to find an Italian Deli and food store.  No Italians where you live?  Don't worry, you can order the right flour from Amazon .

What makes this flour so special is it's ability to absorb a lot of water without the dough becoming soupy.  You'll see most recipes for pizza dough using 00 flour call for 60 or 75% hydration.  Don't worry if you don't know what that means. It's really just the amount of water you use relative to amount of dough.

I follow this pizza dough recipe for the most part.  Sometimes I'll add a bit more water, especially if I am making calzones or a little less if I want more of thicker crust.  I generally double it too because I cook four pizzas at sitting.  The dough balls do tend to be a bit small, yielding a 10-12" pizza.  You can modify that size of our dough balls depending on how big or small you and to make you pizzas.  

Header picture: Photo by Nadya Spetnitskaya on Unsplash