Pizza Flour: A Buyer's Guide

Flour is the skeleton of pizza. The same recipe, with a different flour, can give a completely different pie. To pick the right one, look at three numbers: grind, protein, and strength (W value).

Grind: 00, 0, 1, 2, Type 405 / 550

Italian milling goes from finest (00) to coarsest (2, near-wholemeal). 00 is the standard for pizza. German/Austrian milling uses Type 405, 550, 812; in the US, the categories are cake, AP, bread.

Protein content

• 9–10% (AP / plain) — works for low-temperature, longer home bakes.
• 11–12% (bread flour) — the New York standard.
• 12–14% (00 Cuoco / Caputo blue bag) — for high-heat Neapolitan. High-protein flour holds together at 450 °C without going brittle.

W value

W measures how much water a flour can absorb and how much gas it can hold (fermentation potential). W200 is fine for same-day dough; W280–320 is what you want for 48–72 hour cold ferment. Caputo Cuoco is roughly W300 — that's what we use at Pizza Box.

Recommendations by style

• Neapolitan: Caputo Cuoco (blue), Caputo Pizzeria (red), Le 5 Stagioni Napoletana.
• New York: Bread flour around 12.5–14% protein, e.g. King Arthur Bread Flour.
• Detroit: Bread flour, with slightly higher hydration (70%+).
• Home oven, lower temp: 00 Pizzeria (W 250–280) or a 1:1 AP + bread flour blend.

Where to buy in Hong Kong

City'super and Apita stock the Caputo range; Market Place carries a selection of US bread flour; HKTVmall has both online. For domestic ovens, a 1:1 AP-to-bread-flour blend is a practical fallback.

Next: use the dough calculator to scale a recipe, then follow our home pizza recipe to bake your first pie.