CAPUTO PIZZERIA FLOUR

[fuese]

Does anyone know of other options to buy besides pennmac?

I don't want to buy the 55 lb bag!

[cornicione54]

A cursory web search turns up:
http://www.fredsmusicandbbq.com/ANTIMO_CAPUTO_00_PIZZA_FLOUR_5_lb_BAG_p/cappizza-5lb.htm
http://www.nybakers.com/euro.html
http://store.brickovenbaker.com/flour
I'm sure there are many more out there...

[Pete-zza]

Does anyone know of other options to buy besides pennmac?

I don't want to buy the 55 lb bag!

fuese,

Unless you are trying to avoid PennMac altogether, you should be aware that PennMac sells small bags of the Caputo Pizzeria flour, under the name The Chef's Flour: http://www.pennmac.com/items/3765 and http://www.pennmac.com/items/3411. It also sells the Caputo Pizzeria flour in repackaged small bags: http://www.pennmac.com/items/3202.

If you are avoiding PennMac, you might want to check out the Resources board at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?board=46.0 to see if you can find a local source of the flour or another online source.

Peter

[imaginaryfriend]

Yep. I've been quite happy with the 5lb sacks from PennMac.

[fuese]

Thank you all for your help!

And no, I am not trying to avoid pennmac at all, I was just wondering if someone knew of other resources to buy it. Pete-zza says that the Caputo Chef's Flour is the same as the Pizzeria blue bag flour. I've heard of this before, but is it though? I used to only but the Chef's flour and at some point ordered some of the pizzeria flour from pennmac. I didn't had both flours at the same time to really compare them, but the other day I bought some of the pizzeria flour from this place called piazza italian market and the pizzeria flour seemed really soft to the touch, anyway thank you all again. It might be a good idea to create a list of online resources for the pizzeria flour since it seems like a lot of people wonder about it. So far, pennmac has the best price for it I've seen online.

[Pete-zza]

fuese,

About a year and a half ago, I sent the following email to Fred Mortati, of Orlando Foods, the importer of the Caputo flours:

Recently some confusion has arisen among the members of the pizzamaking.com forum about three of the Caputo flours--the Pizzeria 00 flour, the Pizzaiulo 00 flour and the Chef's flour. See, for example, the post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7191.msg71133.html#msg71133. The members have been going on the assumption that the Chef's flour is the same as the Pizzeria flour but the post referenced above seems to suggest that it is not the same as the Pizzeria 00 flour. Can you clarify the matter for us?

Shortly thereafter, I received the following reply from Fred:

Thanks for the link, I saw the posts and now understand the confusion.   Here is the situation:  All three products are the same.  Reason for the packaging differences are as follows:

00 Pizzeria 25kg blue bag is for Foodservice.  It has been the face of the Caputo brand for pizza and will remain so.
 
00 Pizzaiuolo 10kg is a package that Antimo Caputo uses in Italy for a certain segment of his trade.  Exactly why he went with red I am not sure.  We bring in this 10kg bag to give out only as samples, not for sale.
 
00 Chefs Flour 1kg red bag.  This bag is strictly retail.  We redesigned the bag to be more appealing to the consumer and to have some English description that would allow a consumer to understand that it is more than just an “all purpose” flour.  In fact Antimo and I have been looking at changing the graphic on the front of this package.  The picture of the pizza on front gives the idea that it is only good for pizza, whereas this product is versatile and good for bread and pasta as well.  We are going to change the picture to one that encompasses these other items as well, leaving the description the same and the flour in the bag the same.  We want to start working on a retail presence so this will be a starting point.
 
Hope this explains some…
Please post some of this info to answer the questions raised.

Peter

[fuese]

Very interesting. Thanks again!

[Pete-zza]

fuese,

I perhaps should have mentioned that there is one member, and maybe a few, who feel that the Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour in the big blue bag (25 kg) is not the same as the Caputo 00 flour in the small red bag (Chefs Flour), notwithstanding what the importer has said. It has been speculated that there may be some differences due to different packaging materials and methods. Also, the large bags may go through a different distribution channel than the smaller bags and the time spent in the two channels might also be different. That might show up in the absorption capacity of the two flours being different for the respective users of the two flours.

Peter

[cornicione54]

fuese,

I perhaps should have mentioned that there is one member, and maybe a few, who feel that the Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour in the big blue bag (25 kg) is not the same as the Caputo 00 flour in the small red bag (Chefs Flour), notwithstanding what the importer has said. It has been speculated that there may be some differences due to different packaging materials and methods. Also, the large bags may go through a different distribution channel than the smaller bags and the time spent in the two channels might also be different. That might show up in the absorption capacity of the two flours being different for the respective users of the two flours.

Peter

Peter,

There seems to be a different account of the contents of Chef's 1kg flour here: http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/19/caputo-rosso-here-5083-4.html where someone (Gary) apparently gets confirmation from Molino Caputo that the Chef's flour is Caputo Rosso/Rinforzato:

Yes Chef is the same of rosso
These is in english
But is non the last test
Sorry...
Molino Caputo

with a follow-up from Fred ?Mortati? who seems to say much the same:

Gary,

Sorry, but it is my confusion. We switched the 1kg package from blue extra to chefs rosso. In doing so we switched the flour inside as well and I forgot. The chefs is same as rosso.


Glad the boys are doing well.


Keep it up.

Fred

Both those messages/posts predate your own enquiries from 2009 so perhaps things were different again by the time you emailed Fred. I wonder if it might be a good idea for someone to contact Fred again for confirmation of the current Caputo product line?

[Pete-zza]

cornicione54,

That is a good idea. I will send an email to Fred.

The Caputo Russo that I recall was also in a large 25kg bag but I later learned that La Cuisine in Virginia was selling a small bag, at http://www.lacuisineus.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=rosso. The fact that La Cuisine is also selling The Chef's Flour in the small bag would seem to suggest that the flour in the The Chefs Flour bag is different than what is in the small Caputo Rosso bag.

Peter

[cornicione54]

cornicione54,

That is a good idea. I will send an email to Fred.

The Caputo Russo that I recall was also in a large 25kg bag but I later learned that La Cuisine in Virginia was selling a small bag, at http://www.lacuisineus.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=rosso. The fact that La Cuisine is also selling The Chef's Flour in the small bag would seem to suggest that the flour in the The Chefs Flour bag is different than what is in the small Caputo Rosso bag.

Peter

Thanks. That would be great. Although I'm personally inclined to get the larger 25 kg bag of Pizzeria, I'm curious to know exactly what goes in the "official" Chef flour. That La Cuisine would package the Rinforzato in a separate bag to the Chefs Flour would indeed suggest Chef is not Rinforzato/Rosso.

[Pete-zza]

I received the following response from Fred Mortati this morning on the flours that go into the 25kg bag of Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour and the Caputo flour that goes into the small 1kg The Chefs Flour bag:

Yes, the color and name of the 1kg bag has certainly confused a lot of people.  Because the 00 Pizzeria 25kg bag is destined for the pizza trade on commercial basis, and because the flour is actually quite versatile (compared to other caputo flours), we wanted to use it for the 1kg, but needed to change the package to be more “consumer friendly”.   We decided on a red package for esthetic reasons, and the terminology “chefs flour” so the consumer would understand that this flour is good for just about every application.  Having said, this you properly identified the fact that the flours are in fact the same in the pizza bag and the chefs pack.

Peter

[SmokinGuitarPlayer]

I just happened to stumble on this thread. Perhaps I can throw in my 2 cents.

Thanks to the person that put a link to our webstore.

We DO in fact take the Caputo Pizzeria Flour , available in only 25kg bags, and sell it either in the 25 kg sack or we repackage it into 5lb bags for the home chef.

I had an email exchange about a year ago with Caputo and they told me that the 1kg "retail" bags were NOT the same flour. Similar but not the same.

When I went to Tony Gemigniani's school he strongly recommended the Pizzeria (dark blue bag) flour and told me to use that for the best results, this is when I went on my "mission" and emailed Caputo directly.

So, that being said, we have the 1kg retail bags, and the Pizzeria flour in various sizes on our website. If anyone would like, I will provide a link just let me know.

Fred Bernardo ,
www.fredsmusicandbbq.com

PS. Tony G. also told me that I "should" use 50/50 Caputo Pizzeria and All Trumps ... I am using that mix from time to time and have good results with that and yes, we do repack All Trumps into 5 lb bags for resale as well as all the King Arthur commercial flours.

[pizzaboyfan]

As one of those that holds on to the theory that the Blue and Red are different ( or at least were a year or so ago), let me submit a picture of two balls , I made as a quick experiment.
In fact I repeated the experiment twice.
100 g. red and 100 g. blue
66 g. reverse osmosis water @ 80 degrees F
2 g. salt
no yeast
You can see from the picture that the one on the left (from the Red) is noticeably tackier.
In fact, it was sticky after mixing, and was tacky after a 20 minute rest.
The Blue ball  (right side of pic)was never sticky, nor tacky
Both types of flour are stored in the same kitchen in airtight containers.
Both the Blue and Red bags were emptied into a large airtight container when received.

[Shaklee3]

Sorry to drag up an old topic, but I still don't know what to believe. Pete-zza seems to confirm what everyone thought, but the last experiment on the bottom seems to show that they're different. Who do we believe?

[Jet_deck]

Unless you are making 800 dough balls a day for 3 years, it doesn't really make a rats arse difference.  In a home oven even under perfect conditions you are not going to know the difference.  Caputo 00 is not magic, red or blue.  It is the heat of the oven and the fermentation/time that makes it work.  I bought Caputo 00  when I had no idea what the heck I was doing, thinking it was the magic sword.  It is not, and I wasn't pleased either.

It is not relevant who to believe, buy one of each and show your results.

[norma427]

Shaklee3,

Although the Master gluten mass List by Peter isn’t really scientific, you can see the results for wet gluten mass tests of different flours, (Caputo flours included) at Peter’s Master gluten mass list at Reply 70 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,18075.msg184661.html#msg184661

Norma

[weemis]

Sorry to drag up an old topic, but I still don't know what to believe. Pete-zza seems to confirm what everyone thought, but the last experiment on the bottom seems to show that they're different. Who do we believe?

rule of thumb, always trust pete-zza!

[Pete-zza]

rule of thumb, always trust pete-zza!

Nick,

Hahaha. Thanks for the vote of confidence but in this case I only repeated what Fred Mortati at Orlando foods told me (or what he might have reported on the forum himself). Caputo perhaps didn't help itself by using red for the color of bags for different products. There may also be differences between the same flours packaged in big (commercial) and small (retail) bags because of the differences in packaging materials and the different distribution systems for the two lines. The big bags tend to get used up fairly quickly (by professionals) whereas the small bags intended for the consumer market can sit on retail shelves for much longer.

Peter