I'm going to come right out and tell you our pizza dough is un-bleached and non-bromated.  What does "bromated" mean?  This is a process in which potassium bromate is added to flour to improve rise and elasticity of baked goods.  Pizza dough tossers (especially the amateurs) were impressed when this technology first came out.  The dough held together better making it easier to toss.  The only problem comes about when the product isn't cooked enough, or if too much bromate is addded.  This isn't cool because if it's not all cooked out, we end up eating some.  It's a carcinogen, which is bad enough, but it has also been tied to the unraveling of our DNA strands.  Yes, that IS as bad as it sounds.

 

In many countries around the world bromate is a banned food additive.  It's not banned in the USA.  In theory, because it's an oxidizing agent and therefore should be fully consumed in the bread baking process, so there shouldn't be any left in the finished product.  While it's not a banned food additive, the FDA discourages it's use by bakers.

 

Like bromate, bleach is a chemical that is added to flour to make it whiter.  White flour historically had a reputation for being "better".  The process took time and was therefore more costly.  Traditionally white flour was aged.  Aging white flour helped the flour develop gluten and produce better baked goods. Problem was it came out fairly dingy.  Someone came along and said "We'll just bleach that stuff and add bromate."  It was a little more complicated than that, but you get the gist.  So that's how we got these chemicals in our flour.

 

With modern technology, white flour can be sifted to produce a very white flour with no bleach. However, bleaching flour is still a common practice. Bromating is less common, but a quick online search proves that you can most definitely still buy it and that it's still being used. It's a way of cutting corners and we wont do it. Instead, we use non-bromated, un-bleached, enriched, wheat flour. Seems like common sense. We love what we do. Why not do it better?