Unbleached. No Bromate.

I've made pizza without bromate since 2001. That was before anybody was arguing about it.

What bromate is. Potassium bromate is an oxidizer. It strengthens the gluten network, so the dough holds more gas through the proof and into the first minutes of the bake. A weaker dough stands up straighter. You get more lift with less time and less attention. One operator put it plainly in the trade press this year: it lets you take shortcuts you can't take without it.

It's still legal federally. It's banned in the European Union, in Canada, in China, and in California. New York has moved to ban it too.

I'm not going to tell you what to think about any of that, and I'm not making claims about anybody's health. Plenty of good pizzerias in this state use bromated flour today and make pizza I'd happily eat.

Why I don't use it. Bromate buys you what time and a strong culture already give me. I've got the four days. I've got the mother. Buying the shortcut on top of that is paying twice for the same thing, and the dough would stop being mine.

Working without it makes you work. It's less forgiving when your timing slips, and the dough tells on you faster. That's the job.

Unbleached. Bleaching is a different thing from bromating, and people mix them up. Flour straight from the mill is slightly yellow and takes a few weeks of sitting to age and settle down. Bleaching agents do that in an afternoon. I'd rather let flour be flour. I'll say straight out that this one is more about what we don't add than about some dramatic difference in the pan. It's a choice, not a miracle.

All natural. No GMOs. And a high-hydration dough that gets its structure from fermentation and handling, not from a conditioner.