We have worked with both “regular” pizza flours as well as “organic” pizza flours. Due to its widespread availability we have used doughs made with Sperry Organic Flour during our annual pizza seminar right alongside our regular doughs and we don’t see any significant difference in functionality out to 48-hours of refrigerated storage (cold ferment) time, but after that the dough seems a little sluggish due to the fact that the flour is not malted. When we added a small amount of diastatic malt powder to the dough it performed as well as any of our other doughs up to 96-hours. I’ve not tested it beyond that time. As for flavor of the finished crust we have never seen any difference between those made with organic or non-organic flour. So why use organic flour? It might be part of an organic pizza concept utilizing organic toppings, or you might want to just advertise your pizzas as being made with organic flour to set yourself apart from the guy down the street. As for cost, I don’t go into that swamp, but keep in mind that it only takes, on average, 10-ounces of flour to make 1-pound of pizza dough and a $10.00 increase in cost for a 50-pound bag of flour will increase your dough cost by roughly 12.5-cents per pound. Can you absorb this cost? I can’t answer that but I have seen shops change over to 100% organic flour with a lot of consumer advertising explaining how, to keep bringing our customers the best pizza in town we are now using organic flour to make all of our pizzas (this is where you make the price adjustment to your pizzas) or you can offer it as part of a higher priced “organic pizza” option.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
