Can You Use Cake Flour For Pizza Dough?

While cake flour can produce a softer texture and a more tender crumb in baked goods like cakes and pastries due to its low protein content, it may not be the best choice for making pizza dough.

Pizza dough typically requires a higher protein flour, such as bread flour or all-purpose flour, as this helps develop gluten, which gives the dough its elasticity and chewiness.

Using cake flour for pizza dough might result in a less chewy and more delicate crust that lacks the desired structure and texture.

The low protein content of cake flour may not provide the necessary strength and stretch that you need for a traditional pizza dough.

For the best results, it is recommended to use either bread flour or all-purpose flour when making pizza dough, as they have a higher protein content compared to cake flour, which is better suited for creating the desired chewiness and texture in the crust.

Using Cake Flour For Pizza Dough

It’s not worth the time or effort. Cake flour doesn’t have as much protein as pizza flour. You won’t get a good crust with cake flour.

If I were you, I’d try half bread flour and half cake flour and see what happens. The choice is yours. It’s not like you’ve got anything to lose. If you want to see how it turns out, make only a small batch.

There won’t be much difference, but it’ll still be good. It’s up to you if that’s good enough.

Cake flour is both finer and has fewer proteins than regular flour. There’s a big difference between cake flour and all-purpose flour.

If you make this dough, it will be crumbly and difficult to work with (I just made a batch to prove it). I also don’t like that the dough requires a lot of water, and when it’s cooked, the texture is mealy.

For this reason, most pizza dough recipes call for high protein flour; the gluten matrix is created when you work the dough!

What Flour Do You Need For Making Pizza

Knowing the differences between each flour is incredibly important when you’re deciding on the ingredients for your pizza dough.

Pizza dough can be made with various flours, like All-Purpose Unbleached White Flour, Cake and Pastry Flour, Artisan Bread Flour, Spelt Flour, Cassava Flour, and Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour.

Depending on the amount of gluten in the blend, each flour creates a different texture. We have gluten-free 1-to-1 Baking Flour that’s completely gluten-free, while cake and pastry flours have low gluten content.

The gluten content of some flours is high, like bread flour and all-purpose flour. Gluten has a lot to do with the texture of pizza dough, since it creates a stable texture, which makes it one of the key ingredients.

Using Bread Flour For Making Pizza

Most people use bread flour to make homemade pizza dough, and it’s popular.

The gluten and protein in bread flour are higher than in all-purpose flour.

With high gluten content, this flour makes a very structured dough that rises and stretches.

With this structure, the dough is thick, soft, fluffy, and crispy on the edges. Gluten in bread flour stretches without tearing, making it easier to handle than most flours.

With bread flour, pizza dough can often be incredibly springy and try to bounce back to shape after being stretched out because of the high gluten content.

Try stretching your dough an inch or two more than the recipe says. The stretched dough will spring back to its original size when you place it on the baking sheet.

Here’s what you can make with it:

For chewier results, use bread flour. You can use it to make thin-crust pizza, too, to make the outside crispy and the inside chewy.

Using All-Purpose Flour For Making Pizza

All-purpose flour can be used for everything, but it’s really good for making thin pizza crusts.

Gluten isn’t as prevalent in all-purpose flour as it is in other types of flour. Because it has less gluten, it won’t rise as high as dough containing a lot of gluten when combined with other ingredients.

If you use all-purpose flour in pizza dough, keep in mind that it tends to tear more easily than other flours, so it may be harder to stretch out compared to other flours.

What Type Of Pizza To Use It For:

Pizza is best made with all-purpose flour. It’s popular for making thin New York-style crusts, Neapolitan-style pizzas, and deep-dish pizzas.

Gluten 101

It’s gluten, a protein commonly found in wheat, that gives dough its stretchy and chewy texture.

In addition to gluten, fermented yeast helps the dough rise by creating gas. Kneading releases carbon dioxide, which allows the dough to rise.

Gluten gives many bread products that have a chewy texture.

The difference between all-purpose flour and cake and pastry flour is that all-purpose flour has more gluten, so it can make chewy bread, while cake and pastry flour have less gluten, so it makes lighter baked goods.

Final Words

It’s only natural to wonder what flour you use for pizza dough when more and more pizza crusts are popping up at restaurants.

Every flour has unique characteristics that can help you create the pizza of your dreams, regardless of the type of pizza you make.