Caputo Flour

Looking for caputo or the best pizza flour..

[emglow101]

the best pizza flour

I got the scoop. They just started selling retail size bags of Caputo,right now they are only at A.S. Pork Stores, but very shortly it will be available at Citarella, and Dean&Deluca. Also Balthazar. Hope you find some soon!

You are the man! I appreciate it.

A.S. Pork Stores where is the closest one?

OK, when he said A.S., I said "A & S"? and he insisted it was the same thing, just all different owners and that they are all over NYC and outer bouroughs. Tried to google and came up with both. I really think he is talking about A&S.

Is it really notably better than other brands of 00 flour? (I'm not being argumentative, just curious.) I take it, from other things I've read, it's probably a hard wheat version, for pizza, etc. rather than the soft wheat type for pasta?

I'm not an expert on pizza making,my limited knowledge comes from a live demo by the award winning pizza expert in this article. Maybe this can give you more info than I.

Link: http://washingtontimes.com/food/20040...

Thanks - I googled it before I asked and while the general consensus seems to be that Caputo is "the best," nobody explains why it's superior. I was just wondering if you could comment on any differences from other brands of "00 for pizza" flour.

I don't get out to Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst or the depths of Queens much and don't recall seeing or hearing of an A & S in Manhattan, but now I'm curious and will keep my eye out for the Caputo flour if I come across it (at non-Dean & DeLuca prices, that is. LOL)

No, I'd heard of it but this is the first OO flour I've used. Just lucky I guess! Supposedly it will soon be at Citarellas, Dean and Deluca and BAlthazars also.

Oh and speaking of price, it wholesales for exactly double of all purpose; wonder how much they'll mark it up for retail?

With Dean & De Luca & Citarella, heaven only knows! Could be scary, though D&D sometimes surprises you buy charging fairly normal prices for things like flour. The lowest price I've seen for "regular" 00 flour is around $2/kilo. I haven't looked at D&D lately but it used to be just a little more there. Quite a bit more expensive than American AP or bread flour, but not outrageous.

I've seen a few brands over the years - Bel Aria, Barilla, Gran Mugnaio. The only one I've seen recently with separate packings for pasta and for pizza is the Grand Mugnaio. The one for pizza is labelled "con aggiunta di glutine", but not surprisingly, no specific details about gluten content. (If anyone's interested, I got it at the Italian place in the Chelsea Market, in Manhattan.)

1)Pasta Flour:Good pasta or tagliatelle is made
with extremely thin sifted flour called type 00

2)Durum: Spring wheat grown in Russia, North America,
North Africa -its flour is specially used for making
pastas and spaghetti

Dont ask me WHY, however would imagine that Pasta
flour is probably made from durum wheat, and that
Caputo is simply an Italian sounding brand name
suffixed before the ''00''

Yes, Caputo is a brand name. Professional pizza bakers, or at least ones that have been quoted on the web, seem to favor their "00 for pizza" over other brands. As you say, the 00 refers to the fineness of the grind, not the gluten content, so one does have to look further than just the grade designation. From info I found on a another website, the Caputo pizza flour is milled mostly from Italian wheat which, like most wheat grown in Europe, is presumably a soft variety, with some hard Canadian wheat added in. Since durum is actually relatively low in gluten (though high in other protein), it's probably just a regular hard winter wheat variety.

The fact that durum wheat has relatively less gluten probably makes it easier to work with for commercial pasta, though it doesn't produce particularly good fresh egg pasta in my experience. (Commercial pasta is made from semolina, not flour, and home kneading machinery doesn't even begin to compare, from what I've read. The texture of the dough using durum flour is apparently quite different.) Regular or American pastry flour is much better for fresh pasta and the finer 00 flour gives an even nicer texture than the slightly coarser American all-purpose grinds. American cake flour is also a fine grind and very low in gluten but they do other funny things to it (bleach the heck out of it, acidify it, etc.) which make me leery of trying it for pasta, though I suppose the worst thing that'd happen is I'd waste a couple of eggs and some flour...

The few people I know that use durum flour use it exclusively for breading fried items. Supposedly very good for that.

I've never tried that, but I'll keep it in mind. Once upon a time I did try durum flour for egg pasta and it wasn't pretty. When I finally managed to get a reasonable dough by adding a fair amount of water (which I ordinarily wouldn't use at all) it tasted OK, but the texture wasn't so great and it was a PITA to get rolled out without ripping/cracking, even with the machine.

I believe that the italian "OO" flour used for baking and pizza is actually a soft wheat flour, not the high protein hard wheat flour used for pasta making, most of which is not grown in italy. There is info on the italian flours in Carol Field's very reliable books on Italian baking.

You will note in the link attached that "Roberto" specifically says that the italians do not spin their pizzas - the softer flour they use will not support that treatment.

Attached below is a link to the King Arthur website which sells an italian style "OO" flour with 8.5% protein, vs. 11% and more for american style breadflour. If you cant get out to D.Coluccio or one of the other italian neighberhood stores that sell 00, mixing all purpose and cake flour (paying attention to the protein content) or mailordering from King Arthur are good alternatives.

Link: http://shop.bakerscatalogue.com/detai...

I live in canterbury I can,t find the caputo ( o o )flour THANK YOU

Caputo is great! I've been playing with it, using it for all kinds of things besides pizza too. So fine. I'm going to be talking to the rep from Caputo tomorrow morning, if you're in the NY/NJ area let me know and I will find out where you can get it.

I am in Manhattan i would love to find out. I have been trying to find a place that sells it for a long time.

I'll let you know late tomorrow.

Thank you sooooo much.