Best Pizza Ingredients to Buy

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Dough is four ingredients and only one of them varies in a way you can taste: the flour. Type 00 describes how finely the wheat is milled, not how strong it is, so the figure to look for is protein, around 12 to 13 percent for a dough that survives a long slow rise and stretches without tearing, and lower for a softer, faster base. A 5kg bag makes roughly twenty pizzas and keeps for months, which is why bulk is the sensible format. Yeast is close to interchangeable, the practical distinction being that instant dry goes straight into the flour while active dry wants water first. Semolina is not a dough ingredient at all; it is the coarse dusting that lets a base slide off a peel, and it belongs on any starting list. On the sauce side, canned whole tomatoes and cooked pizza sauce are two different approaches: certified San Marzano plums get crushed by hand and go on raw with nothing but salt, where a jarred sauce arrives already reduced and seasoned. Both work, but only one leaves the salt under your control. Cheese is a moisture decision. Low moisture mozzarella, sold as a loaf or shredded, browns and stays put, while fresh mozzarella releases water and needs draining first. What goes on after the bake, a finishing oil, a chilli honey, a herb blend, is where the differences people actually notice live.