Newbie from Manila

[Blackbird]

Planning and researching for my first ever homemade pizza.
And from all the reading I've made from here (not nearly enough), I'm inclined to try either the DKM thin crust
or the Buzz's Awesome Thin Crust (it's in the American Style thread I think, can't post links yet).

We have a locally made coal-fired brick oven that is yet to be used for baking pizza dough. I'm new to flours as well, and local flours don't say their gluten or protein content here. So it's store-bought all-purpose for me.

No mixer or food processor either. So, lots of luck to me!

[buceriasdon]

Welcome to the forum. I think your choice of a thin crust pizza to start is a good one. I live in Mexico and the flour here is also just ok.
Don

Planning and researching for my first ever homemade pizza.
And from all the reading I've made from here (not nearly enough), I'm inclined to try either the DKM thin crust
or the Buzz's Awesome Thin Crust (it's in the American Style thread I think, can't post links yet).

We have a locally made coal-fired brick oven that is yet to be used for baking pizza dough. I'm new to flours as well, and local flours don't say their gluten or protein content here. So it's store-bought all-purpose for me.

No mixer or food processor either. So, lots of luck to me!

[Blackbird]

That's really encouraging to hear. Thanks, Don!
Will post pics and (more questions, I'm sure) hopefully this week.

Cheers from Manila!

[scott123]

Blackbird, while it may be difficult in certain areas outside of the U.S. to find good flour for pizza, I don't think this is the case for the Philippines.  The stems from the popularity of breads, such as Pan de Sal, that require high gluten flour. I did a quick search and found a handful of bread flour resources in the Manila area (click on anything in green to go to the source).

Baking Ingredients 101

Bakers Depot

You can buy bread flour in Chocolate Lover in Cubao or Sweetcraft in Boni Mandaluyong.. Or you can also buy it in any palengke and look for 1st class flour.

Baking Supply Stores in Manila

Marketman, Philippines says:    Hchie,I bought a sack (25 kilos) of “primera” flour from a bakery supply store in Nasugbu (simply because I happened to be there) but I would imagine you can try buying this at any serious neighborhood bakery or bakery supply store. Primera is a hard wheat flour, which as my sister explains it, has more gluten which helps in bread rising I think. This is the flour used in all those bakeries that have cheap sweet colored bread but believe it or not they use flour intended primarily for baking.

hi, im a dealer of San Miguel Purefoods here in Metro Manila... ...
HARD FLOUR
Emperor
King
Count
Monarch

Now, in your profile, you mention 'New York' style being your favorite.  There may be differing opinions on this, but I think most people would agree that the 'go to' recipe for New York style is the Lehmann recipe found here:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.0.html

Is this 'locally made coal-fired brick oven' used predominantly for bread?  If it is, you're going to need to ramp up the heat for pizza. Breadmaking temperatures are way too low to make good pizza.  You also, and this is where it gets tricky, might need to raise the hearth so that it's closer to the ceiling.  You need relatively intense heat from below AND above. Baking New York style pizza in a brick oven can get a bit tricky, but I would say to shoot for a hearth in the vicinity of 650 degrees F.  and a ceiling about 850.

[RoadPizza]

San Miguel makes quite a few kinds of flour for commercial use.  Their Emperor brand (which scott123 mentions) is the best for making pizza, though I've also tried their Baron flour in the past and it worked well on pizza dough. 

RFM also has Wellington Flour, another decent flour for making pizza.

You can also get "00" flour from a few importers like Italfood (based in Makati).