Guide to Italian Flours — Nina's Pasta Project (2024)

FAQs

What flour do they use in Italy? ›

Grano duro is slightly yellow, more granular, and more commonly used for pasta and some breads in the south of Italy. It's also knows as durum wheat flour. Grano tenero is generally what we think of as white flour, and is more broadly used in bread, pizza, and pastry, and northern pasta doughs.

Semolina: Coarse Durum Wheat Flour

One of the most popular flours for making pasta is semolina flour, which is a coarsely ground flour made from a particularly hard variety of wheat called durum.

In the American flour classification system, type 0 Italian flour would correspond the closest to all-purpose flour. Despite type 00 popularity, high-quality type 0 flour is by no means a niche product, with most flour manufacturers offering options.

For cookies, bars, cakes/cupcakes, biscuits, scones, or anything that needs a tender crumb, use Farina di grano tenero, 00. This is your “cake flour.” Nobody wants a chewy cake.

Type 00. The finest of all, this is even more delicate than American cake flour. It's made from a high-protein variant, which is why it's used for fresh pasta, where you want to be able to stretch the dough to its limits.

Italian flour, like other European flours, is categorized differently, on a numerical scale: 2, 1, 0 or 00. This number does not refer to the percentage of gluten or protein in the flour, but rather, to how finely ground it is (2 being the coarsest and 00 being the finest).

Which 00 flour should I buy? 00 flour, or doppio zero is what most Italian households use to make fresh egg pasta. The white Italian flour is finely-milled, resulting in grains which are finer than semolina, but larger than cornflour.

The semolina flour adds a bit more structure to the dough, which is helpful for shapes like garganelli or farfalle where you want the pasta to “stand up.” You could replace the semolina flour with equal parts 00 flour for a more tender and soft dough, which could be good for something like tagliatelle.

Type 2 flour: also known as "semi-wholemeal" flour, it is a flour characterized by large granules and a greater quantity of fibrous components and seed germ compared to the previous ones. It is a flour that has excellent nutritional characteristics and is easier to process than whole wheat flour.

Made in Italy

Taking a bite of something made with our flour is like taking a bite of Naples.

Why is Italian pasta healthier? ›

A2: Italian pasta is often considered healthier due to the emphasis on high-quality ingredients such as durum wheat semolina, higher protein content, and traditional production methods.

No matter how the flour gets processed, the Italian kind is already softer, slightly sweeter, and lower in protein (i.e. gluten), while American wheat is already harder, slightly more bitter, and high in protein (i.e. gluten).

(The Italian semolina flour used for pasta is a very fine grind, much finer than what is frequently sold in the U.S. as semolina flour.) Semolina flour with a “well” of water in the center. To make this pasta, we folded the water into the flour and made a neat ball of dough; then let it rest briefly.

Semola is key to the production of dried pasta because of its unique qualities. This flour has a high protein content of around 12-15% which, when kneaded, produces gluten. It is this gluten that creates the structure to hold the shape of the pasta (the word gluten actually derives from the Latin word for glue).

Grano tenero flours are generally used in Italy to make both bread and pastries.

US flour is usually made from hard “bread” wheats used for bread and cakes, Italian flour is usually durum wheat, used for making pasta, pizza etc.

About two-thirds of imported grain used in Italian flour come from other European countries — particularly France, Germany, and Austria — but another 13% come from Canada, 11% from the USA, and 10% from Kazakhstan,** all countries where agriculture might have less regulation and oversight.

In Italy, the use of ancient grains such as Einkorn and Emmer is more prevalent than in the U.S. These grains are known for their weaker gluten structure and lower gluten content, which, as discussed earlier, may contribute to easier digestibility and reduced digestive discomfort.

European Flou r Types

These include: Universal (type 480), Stronger White (type 550), Spelt (630), Bread (type 750), Ancient Grain (Einkorn), and Rye (type 720).