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Italian 00 Flour

Tarheel_Boy@webtv.net (Skallywagg Forever)
Sun, 6 Mar 2005 09:55:37 -0500
v105.n011.13
I offer the following from The Artisan <http://www.theartisan.net/> in the 
event you are unable to find a source for Italian 00 Flour:

One of the things we have tried not to do on The Artisan is to try and 
convince visitors that there is a single method by which Italian style 
bread should be made.  We have spent more years than we like to remember 
unlearning techniques that were presented as authentic and irrefutable in 
texts published in this country, and we try not to repeat that 
experience.  To a certain extent, we have an advantage when attempting to 
reproduce Italian regional breads, because we have experienced these breads 
ourselves during numerous visits to Italy.  We know how breads were made, 
and tasted, nearly 30 years ago, and how they are made, and taste, 
today.  We have eaten the breads of artisan bakers, and those of a more 
industrial persuasion.  We know the look and taste of regional breads and 
we know when a recipe or a bread falls short of the original.  This 
knowledge is a benchmark for everything that we do.

Because so many of the texts, magazines, and catalog product literature 
prominent today "think" for us, we have shied away from thinking for you, 
our visitors.  We have and will continue to present as many basic formulas 
(recipes), techniques, and variations as are available to us.  It is our 
desire that you, the baker, decide for yourself which breads you prefer to 
bake time and again.  That being said, we will now present our own personal 
preferences in respect to flour suitable for making Italian style bread.

We do not prefer organic, unbleached, high protein, or all purpose flour 
over other flour.  We have not found that bread made with organic 
unbleached flour is necessarily superior any other.  This surprised us, 
because we often read that organic grains and methods produce a tastier, 
higher-quality flour.  It may be that organic flour production is still in 
its infancy, and as it develops so will its performance and 
consistency.  We do prefer organic flour in recipes which call for whole 
wheat flour.

We have tried conventional flours categorized as both high-protein and 
high-gluten.  Although high-protein flour, commonly referred to as bread 
flour, works well for the style of bread produced in the US, we have not 
found it to work well for European, and in this instance, Italian style 
breads.  Prof. Raymond Calvel of France is quoted on this topic in Volume 
1, Number 4, of The Bread Bakers Guild of America Newsletter, published in 
July of 1993.

"It is a common belief that high gluten, spring wheat is the best choice 
for hearth baked breads.  But Professor Calvel questions that belief, 
pointing out that, although spring wheat does have a high quantity of 
gluten, it does not have the quality of gluten needed for the 
long-fermentation, non-machined, hearth baked breads made by most Guild 
members.  Instead, he feels the gluten in hard winter wheat provides the 
best possible combinations of performance characteristics..."

It is on this last point that we differ from Prof. Calvel regarding Italian 
style bread.  We have tried a variety of unbleached all-purpose flours, 
milled from 100% hard red winter wheat, and have not found these flours 
preferable, especially as these wheats relate to the texture and taste of 
the resulting bread.

Our preferred flour is an unbleached all-purpose flour, ranging in protein 
content from 9.8 - 11%.  This unbleached, all-purpose flour is a blend of 
hard red wnter wheat flour and soft winter wheat flour.  This flour has 
proven to be the most dependable relative to performance characteristics 
and consistency.  It is our flour of choice when making Italian style bread.

We have seen it suggested, in more than one instance, that either pastry or 
cake flour can be blended with unbleached all-purpose flour to approximate 
Italian flour.  We have also seen it suggested that high-protein flour be 
utilized in starters, especially for breads with long fermentation.  While 
we know the blending of a variety of flours and the use of more than one 
type of flour can be effective in a commercial setting, we have not found 
it to be the case when working with those flours available to the serious 
home baker.

In our opinion, the best way in which to judge flour quality is to 
experiment with a number of flours and determine which produces the most 
favorable results. We also recommend that time be spent becoming acquainted 
with the concepts we have presented. They are not terribly exciting in that 
they do not tempt one's sense of smell as a freshly baked loaf of bread 
might, but the end result  of knowing the "W's", "P's" and "L's" of your 
flour may well be a better loaf of bread.


Bob the Tarheel Baker