Bob's Red Mill '00' Pizza Flour review: the strongest supermarket 00

Who it's for

You want Neapolitan-style pizza, you shop in an ordinary US supermarket, and you would like the flour to do more than one job. This bag suits you better than its reputation suggests.

The reputation is that a US 00 is a soft, weak imitation of the Italian article. Bob's publishes 12–13% protein, which puts it above King Arthur's 11.0% and roughly level with Caputo's Pizzeria bag — the strongest 00 you can pick up in a grocery aisle. The ingredient list is one line, wheat flour, so there is no malt and no conditioner doing quiet work.

What Bob's does not publish is a W value, and almost no US mill does — Central Milling is the one exception here. Protein tells you how much gluten there is; W tells you how long it lasts. Without the second number you work from the dough rather than the bag, which is the honest limitation of every American flour in this series.

What it's like to work with

Tighter than you expect from something this fine. At 60% it hydrates fast — the 00 grind sees to that — but it comes up firm and elastic rather than silky, and it wants a rest before it will do anything you ask.

That springiness is the thing to plan around. Open a ball too soon and the disc contracts under your hands, then contracts again in the oven; a base that measured 30 cm on the peel and 27 cm on the plate is the classic shrink after baking, and here it is almost always impatience. Cold-ferment, then give the balls a full 2–3 hours at room temperature before they meet a peel.

The window runs 12–36 hours at 4 °C (39 °F). At 12 it is still tight; at 24 it opens properly and the flavour has arrived; by 48 it is usually slack and spreading in the tub. Keep instant yeast near 0.25% for an overnight ball and stay at or below 65% hydration — the protein will take more water, but a 00 grind at 68% gets grippy in a hurry.

In the oven

Bob's is unusually straight about this, and it is worth quoting: it tested the flour "at 450–500°F with a home oven and at 750–800°F with a specialty pizza oven, to great success". That is 230–260 °C and 400–430 °C, and both are real.

At the high end you get what you came for: 70–90 seconds, a rim that inflates and blisters, a tender centre. At the low end you get structure but not colour. The label is wheat flour alone — no malted barley flour, no added amylase — so there is very little reducing sugar at the surface, and browning needs the surface well past 150 °C (300 °F) with sugar to react with. A 230–250 °C bake on a bare stone gives the familiar pale, floppy base.

The fix is the usual one, and it suits this flour because the extra protein tolerates the longer bake: preheat a baking steel for 45–60 minutes, bake on the top rack, finish 60–90 seconds under the grill. Steel conducts roughly 18 times faster than cordierite, which is what sets the base before the rim dries out.

Versus the obvious alternative

The head-to-head is King Arthur's '00' Pizza Flour, the other 00 in the same aisle. King Arthur publishes 11.0% protein at 0.54% ash; Bob's publishes 12–13% and no ash figure.

Pick King Arthur if handling is what you value: softer, almost no resistance, more forgiving of a rushed stretch. Pick Bob's if you want the dough to survive a day and a half in the fridge, if you like a chewier rim, or if the same bag is making pasta on Tuesday. Neither browns by itself at 230–260 °C, so the real question is whether you would rather have an easier bench or a longer window.

How to use it

A 24-hour formula, in baker's percentages:

• Flour 100%
• Water 62%
• Salt 2.8%
• Instant dry yeast 0.25%

Mix, rest 20 minutes, knead smooth, bulk 1 hour at room temperature, ball at 250 g, then 24 hours at 4 °C (39 °F). Out of the fridge 3 hours before you bake — with this flour that rest is not optional. Scale it with the Neapolitan calculator, and if the disc keeps snapping shut, the stretching guide covers the technique half of the problem.

Keep the toppings inside what a short bake can cook: a classic margherita, or a quattro formaggi if you want to lean on the chew this flour gives you. Store the rest of the bag sealed and cool — a fine grind picks up humidity faster than a coarse one, and a damp 00 hydrates unpredictably.

Bottom line

Better than its shelf position suggests, and mislabelled by reputation. This is not a soft imitation 00; at 12–13% protein it is the most capable one in an American supermarket, and it takes a longer bake and a longer ferment than the King Arthur bag will. You pay for it with a springier dough that punishes a short rest, and, like every unmalted flour here, with a home-oven bake that needs a steel and a grill to look right.