Tag: flour

  • Flour Power: A World Tour of the Bag You Reach For Every Day

    Knead to Know

    Flour Power: A World Tour of the Bag You Reach For Every Day

    Flour isn’t flour isn’t flour. Here’s what those numbers on the bag actually mean, and why they don’t mean what most people think.

    Every country seems to have invented its own way of labeling flour, and none of them agree with each other. Italian “00,” French “T55,” German “Type 550,” a bag from the supermarket that just says “all-purpose” — they can all be, more or less, the same flour wearing a different passport. Or they can be completely different animals. The only way to know is to understand what each system is actually measuring.

    That’s the part that trips people up, so let’s start there.

    These numbers aren’t all measuring the same thing

    This is the single most common misunderstanding I run into: people assume a French T65 or German Type 1050 tells you how strong the flour is: how much gluten it can develop, how much water it can hold. It doesn’t. Those numbers measure ash content: literally, how much mineral residue is left over when a lab burns a sample of the flour. More bran in the mix means more minerals, means a higher number.

    You can have a T55 at 10% protein and a T55 at 13% protein from two different mills. The number tells you about the bran, not the gluten. I learned this the hard way, swapping in a “similar-numbered” flour for a recipe and getting a completely different dough.

    Italy’s system works differently again: 00, 0, 1, 2, and Integrale describe how finely and how thoroughly the bran and germ have been sifted out, not ash content directly, though the two tend to move together. And the Netherlands, US, and UK skip type numbers almost entirely and just print the protein percentage on the bag, which is closer to what most home bakers actually want to know.

    Three different questions, three different answers. None of them wrong — just not interchangeable.

    Italy: refinement, not protein

    The Italian system (00, 0, 1, 2, Integrale) is about how much of the whole grain stays in the bag. “00” is the most refined: fine, white, almost entirely the starchy endosperm, no bran or germ to speak of. It’s what most pizzerias reach for, including the training I did myself. “Integrale” is the other end: full wholemeal, everything left in. The numbers in between are steps along that same road.

    What trips people up: 00 doesn’t automatically mean weak, and it doesn’t automatically mean strong. Italian mills sell 00 flour at a whole range of protein levels: a soft 00 for cakes and a strong 00 built for 24-hour pizza dough are both technically “00.” Always check the protein percentage on the bag itself, not just the type.

    France: T45 through T150

    T45 is the palest, finest, lowest-ash flour, built for pastry and enriched, buttery doughs, not for a chewy sourdough. T55 is the everyday workhorse, roughly what a good all-purpose flour gives you, and the base for a classic baguette. T65 is the one most French country-style sourdough (pain de campagne) is built on. A bit more bran, a bit more flavor, still very manageable. T80, T110, and T150 climb steadily toward full wholemeal.

    Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Type 405 to Type 1600

    Same idea as France, same ash-content logic, just with numbers roughly ten times larger. A French T55 and a German Type 550 are, in practice, close cousins. Type 405 is the fine, low-ash flour for cakes and pastries. Type 550 is the standard bread flour. Type 1050 and up move into darker, more rustic, more mineral-rich territory, with Type 1600 landing at essentially whole wheat.

    A rough translation table

    None of these line up perfectly (ash content and refinement aren’t measuring identical things), but if you need a reasonable substitute for your everyday baking flour, this is the neighborhood to look in:

    Everyday white / bread flourPastry / cake flourRustic / high-extraction
    Italy: 00 or 0Italy: 00 (soft wheat)Italy: 1, 2, Integrale
    France: T55France: T45France: T80–T150
    Germany: Type 550Germany: Type 405Germany: Type 1050–1600
    NL / US / UK: ~11–12% proteinNL / US / UK: ~8–9% proteinNL / US / UK: “whole wheat”

    Rye and spelt play by their own rules

    Worth a quick, separate mention: rye and spelt aren’t just “different wheat.” Rye develops very little of the gluten structure wheat does, absorbs water differently, and behaves nothing like a wheat dough even at matching hydration. Rye is a classic in Northern and Eastern European baking, and worth its own deep dive another time. Spelt, an ancient relative of modern wheat, has a more fragile gluten structure that tears more easily but ferments beautifully. Neither one substitutes 1:1 for wheat flour without adjustment.

    Whatever’s in your bag, the flour type field on the calculator is there so you can note exactly what you used (Type 550, T65, 00, or something with a name I’ve never heard of) right alongside the recipe. Six months from now, when the loaf turns out perfectly, you’ll actually know why.

    — Rob

  • What My Pizzaiolo Training Taught Me About Dough Hydration

    From the Bench

    What My Pizzaiolo Training Taught Me About Dough Hydration

    A few things I picked up during six months of theory and practice, and still think about every time I mix a batch.

    Before Baker Calculator existed, it existed as a notebook. Before that, it existed as roughly six months of Tuesday evenings: one day a week, half theory and half hands in the dough, at a temporary S.N.I.P. affiliate location that was running in Utrecht, the Netherlands at the time. The weeks weren’t always back-to-back; a few got skipped and pushed. It ended, half a year later, with a proper exam, theory and practice both. That’s where I trained as a pizzaiolo, and it’s where most of what this calculator is built on actually comes from.

    Today, S.N.I.P. runs its main courses in Italy, and has affiliate locations in a number of other countries, though as far as I know, there isn’t currently an official location in the Netherlands. If you’re curious, their course finder is the best way to check what’s running near you.

    I want to share a few of the lessons that stuck with me the longest from those six months. Not the fancy ones, the practical ones. The kind you only really understand once your hands are in the dough.

    Dough isn’t one thing — it’s three

    One of the first things we covered in theory was that “making dough” isn’t a single method. There’s direct dough (impasto diretto), where everything goes in together and ferments in one go: fast, straightforward, forgiving. There’s semi-direct dough, which uses a small pre-fermented portion to build flavor before the main mix. And there’s indirect dough, where a portion ferments separately, sometimes for many hours, before joining the rest.

    Nobody tells you this as a home baker, and it’s genuinely useful to know: the “best” dough isn’t one of these three. It depends entirely on your timeline, your flour, and what texture you’re after. I still default to a simple direct dough on a weeknight, and save the longer indirect methods for weekends when I actually have time to enjoy the process.

    Water temperature matters more than the recipe admits

    A big chunk of our theory hours went into something most recipes skip entirely: calculating and managing water temperature. Not “cold water” or “room temperature water”. Actual numbers, worked out from your flour temperature, your room temperature, and how long you want fermentation to take.

    I remember thinking this was overkill, until I made the same dough on a cold December morning and a warm July afternoon using the exact same recipe, and got two completely different doughs.

    That’s really what hydration and temperature control are about: consistency. Once you understand the relationship between water, flour, and fermentation time, you stop guessing and start adjusting on purpose.

    Not all flour behaves the same

    This is the one I already wrote about on the calculator page itself, but it’s worth repeating here because it was such a core part of the training: flour strength (how much water it can absorb and hold onto during a long fermentation) is not something you can eyeball. Italian millers rate it by W-value, French millers by ash content (the T-number), and most of the rest of the world by protein percentage on the packaging.

    What this means practically: the same hydration percentage can feel completely different depending on the flour bag in front of you. A 65% hydration dough with a weak all-purpose flour behaves nothing like 65% with a strong bread flour. Once that clicked for me, a lot of dough failures from earlier years suddenly made sense.

    Your hands learn what numbers can’t teach

    Every session split roughly in half: an hour or two of theory, then straight into the practical side: dividing dough balls, stretching, managing dough that had been resting in the fridge, baking the same dough at different oven temperatures and comparing the results side by side. No amount of reading replaces that. At some point, the dough itself tells you if it’s ready: a certain give, a certain elasticity. And that only comes from doing it, badly, a few dozen times first, week after week, until the exam finally rolled around.

    Why I built the calculator anyway

    None of this means the numbers don’t matter — they’re exactly what let me repeat a good result on purpose instead of by accident. That’s the whole idea behind Baker Calculator: it won’t teach you what your hands need to learn, but it will get the ratios right every time, so you can spend your attention on the part that actually takes practice. If you want to try it out, start with a simple 60–65% hydration for a classic round pizza dough, and adjust from there once you get a feel for your own flour.

    — Rob



    Curious what hydration to actually use? I put together a quick reference for different bread types.