Italian BREAD flours in the USA?

[Marchionna]

Where is a good place to buy Italian bread flours in the states? I seen Caputo flour but what I gather from it is that Caputo is mainly used with pizza not breads.

I am looking for the 'real' thing.

THX

[CanuckJim]

Marchionna,

First off, I live in Canada, so I really can't help you much with US sources. However, a Sicilian friend of mine brought me some flours he found in one of the many Italian sections of Toronto. Not one is Caputo (not imported here, apparently), but they are similar if not as good, I think. Here they are: 1, Molini Pizzuti, farina tipo 00, "All purpose italian wheat flour," 2. Divella Farina, di grano tenero, tipo 00, "superfine soft wheat flour," 3. Divella Farina, di grano tenero tipo 00, "consigliata per pizze e pasta sfoglia; superfine soft wheat flour." Divella is made by F. Divella S.p.A, Rutigliano (BA) Italy, www.divella.it, email: divella@divella.it. Molini is made by Molini Pizzuti s.r.l., Bellizzi (Sa), Italy, www.molinipizzuti.it. Haven't used any of these yet, but I assume #2 is an all purpose flour like #1, and both would be good for bread, while #3 is pizza specific.

I'm pretty sure Caputo does make bread flours as well as pizza blends.

Maybe you could check out these sites and find out who the US importer is, then find out where it's distributed. A bit complicated, but it'll probably work. I've gotten exactly nowhere searching "Italian flour" on the web.

Cheers,
Jim

[james]

The Italian method for describing bread is very different from how we do it in the states. Tipo 00, Tipo 0, etc. describes primarily how finely milled the flour is. There some minimum glutin level, which doesn't tell you anything. They use the "W" scale to describe the strength of the flour -- how hard it is to work, how elastic it is, how long it takes to rise, etc. For example, a W of 170 is for cookies and pastry, 180-260 is for bread and some pizza (55%-65% hydration), 280-350 is for egg pasta, and some breads (65%-75% hydration).

The Tipo 00 you find in a market, unless it specifically says "for pizza" or "special" has a W of between 150-200 -- very low, very light. To make pizza or bread, you are supposed to mix the light flour with a very high W specialty flour to get the strength you want.

That's why buying Italian flour can be a challenge.

The nice thing about the specific Caputo flour that we get is that it is pre-blended for pizza, so you don't have to do any mixing. It's also good for focaccia and light bread, like Ciabatta.

Caputo makes a whole product line of flours, but we only get the pizza flour here in the states. That is their specialty, and what they are so well-known for.

There is a good description in Wikipedia. It's in Italian, but you get the drift pretty easily.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farina