00 vs bread flour is the difference in pizza crust style, and for making light and airy pizza crusts you may dream about from a pizzaiolo, or New York’s finest pizza shops.
…Which btw, good pizza is not in the water, despite the old saying. 😀
It starts with a consistent flour choice that will help make consistent pizza crusts you like, and that you can make for weekly and daily meals… oh, and they’re healthy ones you put on the table.
And that can be the first pizza myth bust (where you’ll find more myths below)…
Pizzas can be healthy topped meals if you watch the cheese portions that have protein, but are high in fat. You can add cheese puddles and not fields.
Then you can add your elevated paired healthy flavor toppings. For someone like me that would be ideas light tomatoes, and veggies like peppers, mushrooms, onions, greens, and other plant-based ingredients on top. Have you seen my tofu as pepperoni pizza?
Pizzas are a good opportunity to add the kitchen sink as we would say when I was a teenage pizza maker for 4 years, working in one of the busiest pizza delivery franchise stores in the world.
Plus you can add ontop, anti-inflammatory spices like oregano, pepper flakes, and a za’atar blend. And even turn your pizza into smoky taste with turmeric and smoky paprika spices.
…I mean, who doesn’t love pizza for the taste and topping variety?
But it alls starts with the pizza crust that should be the best part and not leftover on a plate.
The great news is you can make your own delicious pizza crusts so easily from oven home recipes (without a pizza oven).
Here’s the skinny: you start with the choice of 00 vs bread flour.
Or whole wheat flour or whole wheat bran with more fiber if you’re being more health-conscious and want to add in some.
Below I help you decide, and even bust a couple common pizza crust making myths.👇
But let’s start with where 00 flour came from… and if you’re not familiar, it was named by Italians for how finely ground the flour is.
“00” flour is an Italy naming based on its flour ground-milled fineness. Bread flour is not as fine and named by its protein content. They’re almost uncomparable, but those are our common choices on the grocery shelves.
And bread flour’s uses is in the name. It’s used for many bread purposes besides pizza crust. It’s more about the protein content where bread gluten protein is higher than in 00 flour.
So without knowing more, with “bread” in the name you can guess that bread flour can yield rising airy crusts because of the other bread products you’ve seen in the world.
But you’ll be able to see more for yourself below.
And this may help sway you or help you re-think your flour grocery store purchase choice, and if you need 00 pizza flour at all (that everyone talks about as the one to use for pizza crusts… and maybe the same people that referred to “it’s in the water” for best crusts 😀).
And for this person, 00 flour is not the better flour choice for pizza if you’re looking for a possibly high rise pizza crust, which of course, is subjective to tastes… as in, you decide what you like or prefer.
…But most people would agree that a GREAT pizza crust is an airy and lighter pizza crust, like a wood-fired, Neapolitan-style crust with some bread pockets or bubbling action along with some added brown charring leopard spots. 😊
For me, hands down… that’s my favorite too! The kind that almost melts in your mouth with the cheese.
And if that’s what you like too, bread flour is the better choice for pizza crusts as the rustic airy pockets are endless possibilities. It’s up to the magical oven!
…Oh, and not to mention you can use the remaining bag of bread flour for other common daily bread baking applications.
In comparison (and all fairness to 00 flour), it will yield more uniform (less rustic) pizza crusts that are more like grocery frozen section pizzas after you bake it in the oven.
They’re great for everyday enjoyment, and especially afterschool specials and soccer kids, if that’s what you’re after.
…And with either 00 vs bread flour choice, you can make delicious daily pizza crusts in your home oven and save ordering pizza dollars).
But 00 flour is not necessarily the wood-fired effect pizza choice.
That’s a myth.
And while we’re busting myths here, lemme give you the summary low-down so far:
Myth #1: 00 flour will give you a more airy pizza crust than bread flour
The opposite is true. Bread flour will give more rustic-style pizzas where air pockets form in spots like an inflating balloon, but those are as unpredictable as charring spots.
00 flour on the other hand will yield a more even-style crust.
In a way, bread flour makes for a more exciting pizza crust making experience and 00 flour makes for a more predictable one.
It’s counterintuitive to what you would think bread flour would do as the heavier (less fine) flour choice. Because in other applications, bread flour also makes heavy-duty rolls and bread loaves for your daily meals, so naturally you’d think it’s heavier… oh, and with more gluten.
You would think “fine” (in 00 flour) means resulting in light bakes, like cake flour (vs. all purpose flour) in an angel food cake.
But not so with 00 flour (vs. bread flour) for baking pizza crusts in a hot oven.
And that’s where the magical oven comes into play and it’s predictable that way.
The proof is in the oven baking results. This is a 100% bread flour pizza crust that is light and airy with some puffy air pockets that would make a better air bag… and is a nice food pillow that is about to enter the mouth.
This is a 00 flour crust. It’s much more uniform than a bread flour pizza crust that has been baked the same in a regular kitchen oven with a bake and broil setting.
And this is a pizza made from half bread flour and half “00” flour, that has more of the 100% 00 flour pizza crust characteristics (as the 00 less rising flour will bring down the bread airy-rising flour).
It’s subtle but noticeable if you make enough pizzas.
Myth # 2: you can’t make light and airy crusts from a regular home oven
Yes, of course you can make pizza crusts from a home oven, similar to the kind you find from professional restaurant ovens, pizza ovens, and wood-fired ovens. I do this regularly in my kitchen.
You don’t need a fancy outdoor pizza oven even though that may sound like a dreamy idea that’s fun for entertaining. And you definitely don’t need a wood-fired oven or to even to go to a pizza establishment that has one…
You can make your own star tasty pizzas that look like professional pizzas from your home kitchen or apartment oven that has a bake and broil setting.
…And if that sounds good to you, then keep coming back for more pizza crust tips and healthy food topping inspiration. 🎉
