DoughPlan

Best Flour for Pizza Dough: 00 vs Bread Flour

By Josep Mampel Marques, updated

It depends on the oven and the style. Ooni's pick for a high temperature, short bake such as Neapolitan pizza is "00" flour, and its pick for everything from thin New York-style to thick Detroit-style pizza is bread flour. In a home oven, both work: King Arthur's New York-style recipe uses bread flour, and its Neapolitan-style recipe uses "00" flour at 73% hydration. If you only have all-purpose flour, you can still make good pizza, with a softer chew. Protein content is a useful guide, so the figures are below.

Protein content of the common flours

Protein is what forms gluten when the flour is wetted and kneaded. These are the figures that manufacturers and Ooni publish:

FlourProteinSource
Plain or all-purpose (generic)about 8% to 11%Ooni
King Arthur all-purpose11.7%King Arthur
"00" flour (generic)usually around 11% to 12%Ooni
Caputo Pizzeria "00"12.5%retailer listings, see below
Bread flour (generic)typically 12% to 14%Ooni
King Arthur bread flour12.7%King Arthur

Two cautions. First, "00" does not mean high or low protein. It is a grade of how finely the flour is milled, and as the table shows, "00" flours span a range. Second, we could not open Caputo's own page to confirm its figures, so the 12.5% protein for its Pizzeria flour comes from retailer listings that quote the manufacturer. Check the bag you buy.

Which flour for which style

StyleWhat the sources useOven
Neapolitan, very hot oven"00" flour (Ooni's pick; Ooni's classic recipe)stone at about 400 °C
Neapolitan-style, home ovenKing Arthur "00" pizza flour, 73% hydration260 to 288 °C
New YorkBread flour (Ooni and King Arthur recipes)home oven or Ooni
DetroitBread flour range, per Ooni's flour guidepan, hot oven

The temperatures come from the recipes: King Arthur bakes at 500 to 550 °F (260 to 288 °C), and our Neapolitan hydration guide compares them with the AVPN's 60 to 90 second bake.

Can you use all-purpose flour?

Yes. Ooni says plain flour (8% to 11% protein) "can serve as a stand-in for 00 flour when you're making Neapolitan pizza". King Arthur's all-purpose, at 11.7%, is a little above Ooni's plain flour range and inside its "00" range of about 11% to 12%. The chew will be softer than with bread flour. King Arthur explains that more developed gluten "leads to more chewiness and toughness", which is wanted in pizza crust but not in cake.

Does flour change the water and yeast?

The water, yes, slightly. The AVPN regulations give a range of 1,600 to 1,800 g of flour per litre of water "depending on the degree of absorption" of the flour: a flour that absorbs more takes the lower figure. In practice, start at the style's hydration from the planner and adjust by a few points if the dough is slack or stiff. See pizza dough problems for what to do with a sticky dough.

The yeast does not depend on the flour in our model. The method page says the formula was fitted to a community table with no flour variable, so a flour change is another reason to watch the dough. The yeast guide shows the amounts.

What we have not tested

We have not baked side by side with different flours, so we do not rank brands. We report what Ooni, King Arthur and the other sources publish. A good first test is to make the same dough with your two candidate flours and compare.

Frequently asked questions

Is "00" flour better than bread flour for pizza?

Not in general. Ooni recommends "00" for high temperature, short bakes like Neapolitan pizza and bread flour for styles from New York to Detroit. For a home oven, King Arthur uses both: bread flour for New York-style and "00" for Neapolitan-style.

What protein percentage is best for pizza dough?

The published pizza recipes we cite use flours from about 11% to 14%. King Arthur calls its 12.7% bread flour "a high-protein flour" and its 11.7% all-purpose flour a mid-range one. There is no single best number; match it to the style and the oven.

Can I mix flours?

You can, and the protein of the blend is roughly the weighted average of the two. We did not find a published pizza source for specific blends, so treat any mix as an experiment and change one thing at a time.

Next steps

Sources