Flour and Different Absorption Rates

The hydration of pizza dough and how your pizzas will try out are affected by what kind of flour you use to make your pizza dough.  The hydration of a dough can be stated as a number that represents the ratio of the weight of water in a recipe to the weight of flour in the recipe  It can be used with baker's percents for other ingredients to scale recipes up or down

Millers and flour manufacturers also use hydration numbers in relation to the flours that they mill and sell  The main numbers that they use are "rated absorption values" and "operational absorption values” Bakers would not know what amounts of water they should start with when using different flours.

Flours do have different absorption values.  For instance regular All purpose flour has a lower absorption values than a bread flour.  You would get different results in making pizza with using an all purpose flour compared to a higher protein flour, like a bread flour.  All depending on what kind of pizza dough you want to make, the decision on what kind of flour to be use, should be taken into consideration.

I use high-gluten flour to make most of my NY style pizzas.  It is a harder flour to find, but different Wholesale Clubs do sell high-gluten flour, but in larger amounts.

There are also different kinds of flours.  Some examples are unbleached, unbromated, bromated, some with malt barley added and also other kinds.

I will post more on flours and different absorption values later.

Norma