Category Archives: Italian Flour  Italian Flour  People love to
make Italian breads — pizza especially. And for that, the
serious ones tend to seek out Italian flour, the kind that’s
known as Italian “00″ flour. As to what exactly that is, there
is quite a bit of confusion. Search around the web a bit and you
can find all kinds of animated discourse on the subject:  It’s
HIGH-gluten flour specifically made for pizza!  No, it’s LOW-
gluten flour that’s used for pastry!  No, it’s flour that’s only
used for bread!  No, it’s flour that CAN’T be used for bread!
I’ll do my best to settle some of this, because it is a touch
complicated. First off, Italian flour makers (like all flour
makers on the Continent) don’t classify flours in terms of their
gluten content. Rather, they classify them by ash content.
Italian Type “2″ flour is a high-ash flour (what we in the US
might call a “meal”). Types “1″ and “0″ are medium-ash flours
used for many breads breads. Type “00″ is the low-ash that’s
used for cakes, cookies and s