If you cannot get 00 flour

What the original actually contributes

Two separate things that get conflated. The '00' grade is a milling fineness specification under the Italian system and says nothing about protein — there are weak and strong 00 flours. What a Neapolitan dough actually needs is the strength (a W rating around 250-320 for a long ferment) and the fine, silky particle size that helps the dough extend smoothly and gives the baked rim its characteristic soft, fine crumb.

See the full flour entry

Where availability is the problem

Widely available in Italy and in Italian grocers internationally, and increasingly in UK and US supermarkets. Still hard to find in much of the world, and often expensive relative to local flour.

Options

1. A strong bread flour, ideally around 12-13% protein

   Workable, with trade-offs

   The result is recognisably the style, but you lose something specific — named below.

   Available in: Almost everywhere

   How to use it

   Use at the same baker's percentage. Expect to need slightly more water — coarser, higher-protein flour absorbs more — so add 2-3% hydration and adjust by feel rather than by the recipe.

   What changes

   The crumb is a little coarser and chewier, and the rim slightly less delicate. In a domestic oven, where the bake is longer and cooler anyway, the difference is small enough that most people would not identify it blind.

   What it does not change

   Fermentation behaviour, dough handling, and the style's overall character. This is the closest widely available option.

   Strongly supported
   • Modernist Pizza — The Cooking Lab
   • King Arthur Baking — flour and pizza dough technical guidance — King Arthur Baking Company

2. Plain / all-purpose flour

   A meaningful adaptation

   A good pizza, honestly a different one. Not a failed attempt at the original, and not the original either.

   Available in: Everywhere

   How to use it

   Shorten the ferment — typically 8-24 hours rather than 48-72 — because the weaker gluten network degrades over a long ferment and the dough becomes slack and tears when opened.

   What changes

   A softer, less extensible dough with a lower rise and a more tender, cakier crumb. It makes a good pizza; it does not make a Neapolitan one, and pushing it through a Neapolitan schedule will produce a worse result than adapting the schedule to it.

   What it does not change

   Flavour development from fermentation, within the shorter window it supports.

   Strongly supported
   • Modernist Pizza — The Cooking Lab
   • King Arthur Baking — flour and pizza dough technical guidance — King Arthur Baking Company

3. Blending bread flour with a small proportion of plain flour

   Close

   Keeps what defines the style. There is a difference, and it is minor.

   Available in: Everywhere

   How to use it

   Roughly 80% bread flour to 20% plain, adjusting toward more plain flour if the dough resists opening.

   What changes

   Softens the crumb toward the 00 character while keeping most of the strength. The most effective home workaround, and the one most likely to satisfy someone chasing the texture specifically.

   Generally accepted
   • Modernist Pizza — The Cooking Lab

4. Cake flour, or any low-protein soft-wheat flour

   Not recommended

   Commonly suggested, and it does not work here. The reason is given rather than the advice simply withheld.

   How to use it

   Do not use it as the main flour for a pizza dough that has to be stretched thin and lifted.

   What changes

   It is sometimes suggested because it is finely milled like 00. Fineness is the part of 00 that matters least: the protein is far too low to build a network that survives handling, and the dough tears when opened.

   Strongly supported
   • Modernist Pizza — The Cooking Lab

Related

Evidence

• Modernist Pizza — The Cooking Lab
• Molino Caputo — technical flour specifications — Molino Caputo