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GRAIN AT PEPE IN GRANI

We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.

—WENDELL BERRY

There is no best of anything, no absolute ideal of perfection. I truly believe that. But at any moment, you can stumble upon your own experience of perfection. You remember every detail, every nuance, every taste of these special moments. You don’t need to take any pictures or write anything down because it is all written on your soul. That’s what it was like the first time I tasted Franco Pepe’s pizza. There were five of us, and we had been eating great pizza all day at places like 50 Kalò and Da Attilio in Naples. We pretended to relax with some espresso and rum baba by the water. But inside, we were all so excited to drive up to Caiazzo that night and eat pizza at Pepe in Grani.

I remember the first bite: fried pizza with mortadella and ricotta. We had been chatting away at the table. Then that pizza—perfectly cut in five slices—was laid down in front of us. An eerie silence came over the table. It didn’t look like anything new or innovative. It looked like a piece of fried dough with some mortadella and ricotta on top. That all changed when we tasted it. We stared at each other, gazing in amazement, our mouths full of happiness. Then we hungrily kept eating. One slice each…that’s all we got. Franco knew we had about ten more pizzas to go.

That night, we had pizza with shaved celery, melted onions, mozzarella di bufala, and tuna from the Amalfi Coast; pizza scarpetta with aged tomato passata and a beautiful crema of Grana Padano; the most amazing margherita pizza I have ever tasted; and a calzone stuffed with escarole, olives, capers, and anchovies. Every pizza was incredible. Each one told a story of Franco’s ingredients from the ricotta cheese made with local buffalo milk to the tomatoes grown in nearby mineral-rich soil.

But it was the pizza crust that really grabbed me. You know how sometimes you eat pizza and maybe skip the crust, just leaving it there on the plate? That never happens at Pepe in Grani. We ate every scrap of all ten pizzas. After finishing the toppings and getting down to the rim of each pizza, all these new flavors emerged…flavors in the crust itself. It was mostly the flavor of Franco’s wheat. You could taste minerals, grass, flowers, butter, hazelnuts, and popcorn. In pizza crust. It was sick!

Not many people talk about the flavor of wheat. But the truth is, wheat has flavor, and different wheat varieties have different flavors. They’re sort of like wine grapes. Wheat gets different flavors from the variety, the soil, and the climate it’s grown in, and those flavors end up in your flour and in your pizza. Chefs spend hours sourcing the best possible ingredients, forming relationships with produce farmers and getting to know the difference between heirloom vegetables like Green Zebra and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. But we have so much to learn about wheat. Do you know what’s in that bag of 00 flour you grab for your pizza dough? What wheat variety is it? How was it milled into flour—and when? And where was it grown—in what kind of soil? Like every other ingredient you cook with, whether you cook at home or in a professional kitchen, it makes a difference. Even freshness matters. A lot. As with other foods, fresh flour has more flavor than flour that’s been sitting around for months. It’s that simple.

So I asked Franco where he gets his wheat. Turns out most of it comes from just outside Bergamo. The mill is called Molino Piantoni, and the Piantoni family business goes back five generations. In the fall, Franco also gets a small amount of flour milled locally from an ancient wheat variety that isn’t widely grown in the region anymore. But the farmer he works with still grows that wheat to preserve the food traditions of Campania. Franco made us a “pizza del territorio” with that flour because he wants to preserve the local traditions, too. All of Franco’s ingredients have stories like this. He puts all his efforts into regional ingredients to honor the history of Campania and to preserve the customs of his fellow craftsmen—the farmers, the millers, the butchers, and the cheese makers. He respects the old way of doing things. He knows who grows and mills his wheat. He mixes his dough by hand in a wooden bowl and ferments it with no refrigeration. And he makes his pizza from start to finish with no machinery whatsoever. Just a wood-fired oven. Franco Pepe is laser-focused on quality at every step. That’s what makes his pizza taste so ethereal, and his flour is a huge part of that.

WHITE FLOUR

If you think about it, when you eat pizza, you’re eating mostly flour. A typical Neapolitan pizza is about 60% dough by weight, and pizza dough itself is about 60% flour by weight. That’s why your flour makes such a big difference in the taste of your pizza. Pizza made with white flour isn’t all bad—just look at how many people love it. I’m just saying that your pizza could just be soooo much better by using better flour. The crust is the foundation of any pizza, and the sad truth is that the vast majority of wheat flour in most pizza crusts has had most of the dynamic wheat flavors milled away.

Modern grain mills are designed to remove the most flavorful—and nutritious—parts of the wheat kernel, the germ and the bran. That leaves behind only the endosperm, the starchy white center of wheat that is ground into white flour. In the mid-1800s, the “roller” mills that removed the bran and germ were considered revolutionary. They broke the wheat kernels into separate pieces instead of just grinding the whole grain. Roller mills made quick work of separating out the bran and germ so that huge volumes of refined white flour could be milled in less time.

It’s true that roller mills are efficient, but they can create a lot of friction in the process, and that heats up the wheat, destroying some valuable enzymes and subtle flavors in the flour. Today’s American all-purpose flour, bread flour, and even most tipo 00 flours from Italy are ground in roller mills. They all taste mild and vaguely “earthy,” the familiar taste of bland wheat flour. Why have we grown accustomed to such flavorless food? Because it’s profitable for the grain industry! Refined white flour lasts longer on the shelf. That’s because the germ in a kernel of wheat is high in oil, and when you grind the germ along with everything else in the grain, the oil makes the flour go rancid faster. Removing the germ and bran extends the shelf life, so the flour can be kept and sold for more time at the market. But what are we sacrificing in the process? Flavor and nutrition!

The good news is that people are starting to demand more and more flavor and more and more nutrients from real, whole, minimally processed foods. Finally! This demand has fueled a big movement that is reviving heritage wheat varieties and whole-grain flours, ones that taste better—and are better for us—than the flours you find in most markets. These flours, especially fresh milled, can make a big difference in the taste of your pizza dough. So why aren’t more people using them on a regular basis? It’s complicated. A lot of things came together to put those familiar bags of white flour on the shelves, and no one tells the story of our current situation more simply and beautifully than Dr. Stephen S. Jones (see this page).

STONE-GROUND FLOUR

As Dr. Jones explains, better-tasting pizza can be as simple as adding fresh-milled, whole grain flour to your dough. You might think, “Why not just add some store-bought whole wheat flour?” Well, store-bought whole wheat flour gives you the nutrition but not the flavor—because it’s not fresh! For flavor and nutrition, fresh-milled stone-ground flour is the way to go.

Stone milling has been around since, well, the Stone Age. Stone mills differ from roller mills and other mills in one very important way: they grind the whole grain—bran, germ, endosperm, and all. When operated at low speeds, they also tend to generate less friction and less heat than big industrial roller mills. That’s how stone milling can preserve some of the heat-sensitive enzymes and subtle flavors in the wheat kernel. All in all, stone-ground flour comes out less processed. I guess wheat is just like every other food. The less processed, the better!

The next time you make pizza dough, look for fresh stone-ground flour at a local farmers’ market or mill. Check out the list of regional US stone mills on this page. Better yet, mill some flour yourself. It’s not hard. Milling your own flour or having it ground in a community mill used to be the norm. In fact, Roman soldiers milled their own flour on the go with small portable hand mills—and they ate better in battle than many of us eat at home today.

Home Milling

Think of wheat like coffee. If you grind the beans and brew the coffee right away, your coffee tastes better. Many people get that, and they have coffee grinders at home. Well, it’s the same with grains. For better-tasting baked goods like pizza, grind some fresh flour.

You can buy an inexpensive grain mill and make fresh flour at home. It’s easy. The two main types of home mills use steel or stone to grind the grain. Steel mills are high speed and produce more friction and heat, which we already know can destroy enzymes and vitamins—and flavor. My advice: go for a small stone mill. They operate at lower speeds, produce less friction, less heat, and help preserve the vitamins, enzymes, and delicate flavors you’re trying to get from fresh flour in the first place. A stone mill is basically a hopper and two little stones that rub up against each other to crush the grains that you put in it. It’s not gonna break. For a couple hundred bucks, you can get a stone mill that grinds plenty of flour to whatever fineness you like. Small stone mills like the Mockmill attach right to your stand mixer. They’re perfect for making a couple pounds of pizza dough with fresh flour. If you use lots of flour for other kinds of baking, something like the KoMo mill is a slightly bigger countertop version that still costs less than most espresso machines. If you really love pizza, think of it as an investment. Grab a grinder and start making fresh flour for your pizza dough. If you chill your grains and grind them cold, they’ll heat up even less when you mill them, and they’ll retain even more flavor. Either way, you’ll love the sweet, nutty, complex taste of fresh flour.

New Flour

 

Dr. Stephen S. Jones is a renowned wheat breeder and director of The Bread Lab at Washington State University. He enthusiastically agreed to explain the many benefits of using fresh-milled whole wheat flour in this brief essay.

“Yeah, sure, fresh-milled whole wheat flour is great, but what is the shelf life?” I hear this question at least twice a week. My response varies, but usually it is something like, “What is the shelf life of an egg?”

Flour was one of the first foods that we industrialized. Up until the nineteenth century, most community mills were stone mills. With the advent of large-scale roller milling in the late 1800s, we started producing mounds and mounds of shelf-stable white flour in fewer areas of the country. The result? We lost about 25,000 regional stone mills. That’s a lot of shelf life. It’s also a lot of communities that lost access to good jobs and good-quality regional food—flour—all in the name of a whiter and whiter product with a longer and longer shelf life that, ultimately, has done little more for us than help build an over-efficient, overprocessed, and over-predictable food system that benefits everyone but us, the consumer.

What did we lose in this methodical quest for the ultimate shelf-stable ingredient—white flour? We lost 25% of the wheat kernel, which is discarded in the process. As a result, we also lost flavor, fiber, minerals, genetic diversity, and the understanding of flour as a living food like any other plant food.

What do we need to do to capture all those things back? Nothing. That is the beauty and the irony. All we have to do is grind every bit of the wheat kernel into flour. It is amazingly simple. Use the whole grain.

Want flour and baked goods that taste like something new? Use fresh-milled whole wheat flour, perhaps even some from a local grain grower that you milled yourself. And unless you are filling the larder for a clipper ship, learn to use reasonable quantities of flour that make sense for your scale and frequency of baking. By doing so, you are helping to reclaim one of our most important historic foods—fresh flour.

What can you expect from fresh flour? More flavor, to start. Within a few days, milled grains lose much of their flavor nuance. But fresh flour tastes grassy, nutty, clean, and bright. Fresh flour may be a bit weaker than aged flour, but that’s actually good for pizza dough. With fresh flour, your dough will be more extensible and easier to shape instead of snapping back.

One easy way to start using fresh-milled flour is to mill your own with a small home mill (there are several good ones on the market). Just throw a handful of fresh flour into any one of your favorite recipes instead of the flour you usually use. A handful of fresh-milled flour will add nice nuances of flavor, color, and texture. Once you get comfortable with a handful of fresh-milled flour, start ramping up the amount. Remember that fresh-milled whole grain flour absorbs more water than store-bought refined white flour, so add a bit more water as you go.

Want a simple way to improve the taste of your pizza dough? Add some fresh-milled flour. Want shelf life? Buy canned peas.

—Dr. Stephen S. Jones, wheat breeder and director of The Bread Lab at Washington State University

I have gotten so excited about fresh flour over the past few years that I have a few different stone mills at home and at my restaurants. For some breads, I just mill the grains and mix up the dough with 100% whole grain flour. For other things like pancakes on Saturday morning, I might mix white flour and stone-ground flour fifty-fifty, so the pancakes don’t come out too heavy from all the bran and germ. There are so many variations—that’s part of the fun of playing around with fresh-milled flour.

For pizza dough, I recommend starting with 10 to 20% fresh-milled stone-ground flour. Just replace 10 to 20% of the bread flour called for in any of my recipes. You can use whole grain wheat, spelt, emmer, einkorn, sprouted flour, or any other flour you like. I usually grind the grains and then sift the flour once through a fine-mesh sieve. It’s just a typical metal sieve for home kitchens that I got at Whole Foods Market. The sieve removes some of the larger bran flakes that can weigh down the pizza dough. But don’t throw out the bran—save it for other things like sprinkling on yogurt.

Flour Extraction

If you start milling flour at home or buying fresh flour at a farmers’ market, you might hear the term “extraction rate.” That’s basically the amount of grain that ends up in the flour after milling and sifting. If you mill whole grains and don’t sift the flour at all, you get 100% extraction because you’re keeping 100% of the bran, germ, and endosperm. If you mill whole grains and then sift the flour a little, you get what’s called high-extraction flour. You’re still extracting a high percentage of the whole grain in the flour. When testing fresh flour for the pizzas in this book, we milled on the finest setting of our home mills. For every 1,000 grams (2.2 pounds) of flour we milled, we sifted out about 100 to 200 grams of bran/germ flakes. That’s an 80 to 90% extraction rate, which is high-extraction flour. Anything above 75% is considered high extraction.

Local Grain Mills

 

Here’s a list of sources for whole grains and high-extraction flours milled at stone mills around North America. Many of these farmers and mills use heritage varieties of wheat. Some also make spelt flour, rye flour, and oat flour. If you want stone-ground heritage wheat flour from Italy, check out Mulino Marino in Piedmont. They mill heirloom grains for a lot of Italian bakers in Rome and Naples, and you can buy their flours online. Their buratto flour makes fantastic pizza dough.

NORTHEAST

MID-ATLANTIC

SOUTHEAST

MIDWEST

SOUTHWEST

NORTHWEST

WEST

What about store-bought all-purpose flour? That has a lower extraction rate of about 70%. Much less of the wheat kernel ends up in all-purpose white flour. Bread flour, the kind used in most pizza dough, tends to be a little higher. It hovers around 72% extraction. And what if you pick up a bag of fresh-milled bread flour from the farmers’ market or a mill—what kind of extraction rate will it have? Probably 70 to 75%. But it could be higher. Ask. Honestly, don’t worry too much about the exact extraction rates in your flour. It only tells you what percentage of the wheat kernel ends up in the flour. Just grind some flour nice and fine at home, sift it once through a sieve, and use it to make pizza dough. It will work fine. More importantly, it will taste awesome because it’s fresh!

Other Milling Terms

If you really start getting into fresh milling, you might come across a couple other milling terms. They’re good to know, but don’t worry too much about them unless you’re deep into making different kinds of bread dough.

Ash content. This is the flour’s mineral content. A lot of it comes from the soil and where the wheat is grown. Ash content is calculated by incinerating the flour, which leaves behind the mineral residue that is then measured. Most of the minerals (like selenium, manganese, phosphorus, copper, and folate) are in the bran and germ. That’s one reason why whole grain flours are so much healthier for you—they contain so many minerals. High-extraction flours also retain more of the bran and germ and have a higher ash content and more minerals. These flours are good for yeast growth, too, because yeast needs minerals to grow. Look for flour with a high ash content if you want robust yeast activity in your pizza dough.

Falling number. This number measures the flour’s enzyme activity. Falling number is calculated by mixing the flour with water to make a slurry. The slurry gets heated in a test tube to release starch from the water, and then a plunger is placed on top of the tube. The number of seconds it takes the plunger to fall to the bottom of the test tube is the falling number. During that time, enzymes in the flour are converting the starch to sugar. Remember: the higher the falling number, the lower the enzyme activity. If it takes 300 to 600 seconds (5 to 10 minutes) for the plunger to fall, that’s generally considered a high falling number, and that means the flour has low enzyme activity. If it takes less than 200 seconds (3.3 minutes), that’s considered a low falling number, and that means the flour has high enzyme activity. Essentially, falling number measures how much the grains have sprouted before being milled. That number can be a factor when you’re making pizza dough. Enzymes help along the fermentation process, and if the flour has low enzyme activity (high falling number), the dough fermentation will be less robust. On the other hand, flours with high enzyme activity (low falling number) lead to more robust fermentation. Higher enzyme activity also means that the protein in the flour will degrade or weaken sooner. Both sprouted flours and fresh-milled flours tend to be high in enzyme activity.

FLOUR FINENESS

We should discuss flour texture a little. Some people like their flour milled superfine for pizza. It makes the crust feel soft and silky when you bite into it. That’s what’s recommended for Vera Pizza Napoletana (this page). In Italy, that means type 00 flour, which is ground as fine as baby powder.

I used to use 00 flour for pizza. Years ago, when I opened Osteria and started making pizza, we used Caputo tipo 00 flour in the red bag. A lot of good pizzerias use that kind. We used it for 6 months, and it worked great. Then something happened in Italy, and we couldn’t get the flour for a month. That’s Italy for you! So we started using King Arthur Sir Galahad bread flour instead. American bread flour isn’t ground quite as fine as 00, but it worked great, and the dough felt really good when you handled it. We actually liked the King Arthur flour a little better. Then the Caputo 00 became available again and when we switched back, we said, “Hey, it’s not as nice.” Is it because I like a slightly coarser texture in my pizza crust? Or is it because the King Arthur flour has a little less protein than the Caputo 00? Maybe the flour was fresher? Hard to say! And that’s just me. If you like the texture of talcum powder, go for the Caputo.

Just keep in mind that finer flour absorbs less water. If you use 00 flour in a dough recipe that calls for American bread flour, it will be a little looser because the flour doesn’t absorb as much water. It’s not a big deal. You can just work in a little more flour if you want. But it’s good to know. The water absorption of fine flour is also why I recommend that you start by subbing in only 10 to 20% of fresh-milled flour for the bread flour called for in my pizza dough recipes. I have no idea just how finely milled your flour will be, but 10 to 20% won’t make a huge difference. As long as you use some kind of bread flour as your main flour, you could use fine or coarse flour along with it, and the dough will still make a nice crust on your pizza.

WHEAT GLUTEN

That brings us to one final facet of wheat flour that’s really important: protein. You can play around with different flours, but for bread and pizza, I primarily use high-protein bread flour. There are different wheat varieties out there, but bread wheats are generally hard wheats high in protein. When milled, they make what is called strong flour because the flour is high enough in protein that the dough you make with that flour will be strong enough to hold a shape. When you mix bread flour with water, the protein in the wheat absorbs the water. And then something magical happens. The flour and water rearrange themselves into the largest composite protein in the world, gluten. Gluten is what makes bread flour strong. Gluten is also what makes bread hold its shape. Gluten forms long, stretchy sheets of protein that you can fill with air like a balloon. Gluten is what makes pizza dough elastic and allows it to rise. Gluten is what develops and strengthens when you mix and knead the dough. Gluten is the key to pizza dough! In fact, the protein content and gluten qualities of any particular variety of wheat are the two biggest factors determining how the flour will behave in your pizza dough. Play around with different flours. But if you want pizza dough to rise and puff up nice and big in the oven, stick mostly with flours that have strong gluten qualities. Check out the chart on this page for a snapshot of different modern and ancient wheat varieties, their protein content, and gluten qualities.

Wheat Flour Protein Content and Gluten Quality

 

In any wheat flour, the protein content and gluten quality determine how the flour will behave in pizza dough. Most of my dough recipes call for bread flour. But you can sub in at least 20% of another flour with a similar protein content and gluten quality without drastically affecting how the dough behaves. You may even be able to mix the flours half-and-half, depending on the particular flour you use. For the best results, use whole-grain flour that is freshly milled! Keep in mind that there is some overlap among these flours and their gluten qualities. Flour is a living food with multiple variables affecting its baking qualities. Use this chart as a general guideline.

Sources: USDA Food Composition Database; thefreshloaf.com; caputoflour.com; On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee; The Bread Lab at Washington State University

WHOLE GRAIN FLOURS

Betcha didn’t know wheat was so complex. And we’ve barely scratched the surface!

I wish I could tell you to just use all fresh-milled stone-ground whole grain or high-extraction flours for the pizza dough recipes in this book. But what is the particular wheat variety in the flour you are using? Will it make good pizza dough? What’s the protein content? Is it strong enough to form a gluten network that will hold bubbles and puff up the crust during baking? What’s the falling number? There are just too many variables to make sure that the dough recipe will work.

The most important thing to take away from all this is that you should start using at least some fresh whole grain or high-extraction flour in your dough. Maybe you want to try spelt flour. Go for it! Lots of people with wheat sensitivities say spelt is easier to digest. It makes soft, light-tasting pizza crust, too. Or maybe you want to throw in some sprouted flour. Do it! Sprouted flours are also more digestible and make light doughs with a subtle sweet flavor. Sprouting jump-starts the fermentation process, too, so your pizza dough will ferment faster.

But I digress. The point is that the spelt and sprouted wheat flours on the market today tend to be whole grain flours. A lot of other whole grain flours are available now, and I encourage you to try them. Whole grain flours have more flavor than store-bought white flour. Just remember that any whole grain flour will make your pizza dough feel a little looser. The extra bran and germ in whole grain flour weaken the gluten network a little, so you may need to work the dough a bit more to strengthen the network. Even if you do work the dough more, whole grain dough may be a little less elastic and less likely to snap back. But that also makes it easier to stretch, which is great for shaping pizza. Handle whole grain pizza dough with a little more care. Be gentle.

The truth is, you can experiment with replacing 10 to 20% of the bread flour in my dough recipes with any other flour you like, whether it’s fresh-milled, whole grain, sprouted, gluten-free…whatever. Find or make some fresh flour and toss it in your dough. When I started experimenting, I did the same thing that Franco Pepe did. I partnered with a local mill that grinds local grain. At Pizzeria Vetri, we use Redeemer, a heritage variety of hard red winter wheat grown locally in Pennsylvania. It’s stone milled at Castle Valley Mill, a short car ride from Philadelphia. We use 10 to 20% of this fresh whole grain wheat in our pizza dough, and it adds such amazing flavor.

I hope you make a similar discovery. Ask around, check the sources on this page, and find a local farmer or mill with a heritage variety of wheat that’s grown and milled near you. Support your region’s food traditions and make your own signature pizza dough. If you mix 20% of that local flour into your dough and like the taste and texture of the pizza, then bump up the amount from there. The more whole grain flour you add, the looser the dough will become. You may have to add a bit more water. But that’s dough for you. It’s all about flour and water!

Grains clockwise from top right: Rye, Sonora Hard White Wheat, Redeemer Hard Red Wheat, Khorasan-Kamut, Spelt, Blue Beard Durum Wheat

Grains clockwise from top right: Rye, Sonora Hard White Wheat, Redeemer Hard Red Wheat, Khorasan-Kamut, Spelt, Blue Beard Durum Wheat.

Flours clockwise from top right: Blue Beard Durum Wheat Flour, Tipo 00 Wheat Flour, Rye Flour, Silted Redeemer Hard Red Wheat Flour, Whole-Grain Sonora Hard White Wheat Flour, Whole Grain Redeemer Hard Red Wheat Flour.

Flours clockwise from top right: Blue Beard Durum Wheat Flour, Tipo 00 Wheat Flour, Rye Flour, Silted Redeemer Hard Red Wheat Flour, Whole-Grain Sonora Hard White Wheat Flour, Whole Grain Redeemer Hard Red Wheat Flour.

Protein in Other Whole Grain Flours

 

Think of these whole grain flours as flavors to add to your pizza dough. Each flour will complement the wheat flavor. You’ll also get some healthy fiber, vitamins, and minerals by using the whole grain. My pizza dough recipes generally call for bread flour, which is high in protein and has strong gluten qualities that form the structure of the dough. Most of the flours listed below do not contain gluten (the few that do are marked). When experimenting with these flours, start small by replacing only 10% of the bread flour with one of these flours. You might get a little less lift and poof in the pizza crust, but for some flours, you may be able to use up to 20% to add more of that flour’s flavor to your pizza. The protein in these whole grain flours will also give you some chew in the crust.

Source: Data from USDA Food Composition Database.