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Re: 00 Flour

"Adele Klingberg" <herblady@houston.rr.com>
Sun, 13 Mar 2005 08:40:36 -0600
v105.n013.4
I found this on Google also, (http://www.ochef.com)

What is 00 Flour?

In Italy, flour is classified either as 1, 0, or 00, and refers to how 
finely ground the flour is and how much of the bran and germ have been 
removed. Doppio zero is the most highly refined and is talcum-powder soft. 
Many people assume that this softness also means that the flour is low in 
protein, and therefore particularly suitable for making pasta but 
unsuitable for use in making bread. They are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

As Jeffrey Steingarten cogently explains in his new book, It Must've Been 
Something I Ate (Canada, UK), flours of varying protein levels can be 
milled to the 00 category. He had a number of samples of flour analyzed in 
a lab and found the 00 flours to be higher in protein than many of the 
less-refined ones. Higher protein 00 flours that are suitable for making 
bread are labeled in Italy as "panifiable" - essentially "bread-ready."

Steingarten says cooks in the United States sometimes substitute a mix of 
low-protein cake flour and all-purpose flour for the 00 flour called for in 
a pasta recipe. But Marcella Hazan, author of The Essentials of Classic 
Italian Cooking (Canada, UK), says she finds that all-purpose flour does 
the "most consistently satisfying job" in standing in for the doppio zero.