While most of the high protein flour still sold as bag flour, in the U.S. is bleached and bromated, is is getting easier to find unbleached flour. As for the bromate, all of the operators in California, and Canada are probably using an un-bromated flour. Bromate is illegal to use in Canada, and highly discouraged in California. Are bleaching and bromating of flour really needed by the pizza industry? No. Bleaching only removes the beta carotinoid pigments (yellow color) frol the flour, so without the bleaching, the flour has a slightly yellow, or actually, creamy color to it rather than a bright white color. Much of the flour used by the baking industry today is un-bleached. The bromate is a strengthener that has little application for most of us. It may improve the overall performance of frozen dough to some extent that is true, but how many of us make or use frozen dough? It can also improve the dough performance when we insist upon holding our dough in the cooler for more than three days. Learn to live with a three day inventory of dough in the cooler (actually, that is pretty easy to do, and it is what most of us are already doing) and you don’t need the bromate at all. Besides, if you happen to be one of those who really need the bromate, for whatever reason, you can buy additive dough strengtheners that are added to the dough and function in a similar manner. Point is, we really don’t need bleached flour, and we really don’t need bromate in our flour either, at least not in retail (pizzeria) pizza production. As for making dough with an unbleached, unbromated flour, not a problem, you shouldn’t see any difference at all if you just keep your refrigerated storage time to not more than three days.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
