Learn how pizzeria owners are successfully adjusting their dough recipes to use unbleached, unbromated flour

Key Points:

• • Regulatory shifts and growing industry momentum are making unbleached, unbromated flour the new standard for pizzerias — not just a preference.
  • Operators who adjust their mixing process, fermentation approach, and ingredient choices thoughtfully find the switch delivers better dough consistency, product quality, and customer confidence.

When New York state lawmakers voted this spring to approve the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, which bans the use of dough conditioner potassium bromate among other food additives, owners of pizzerias using bromated flour likely worried about how they would adjust to the mandate. Several pizzeria owners who already made the switch in their own shops spoke with Pizza Today about their experiences and what to expect when adjusting to unbleached, unbromated flour.

Victoria Tiso, owner of Tori T’s Pizzeria and 914 Pizza in Long Island, New York, says she realized the industry was moving toward unbleached, unbromated flour after talking a friend who specializes in Roman-style pizza.

“Rob Cervoni has always been big on no bleach, no bromate. So, it kind of clicked for me this isn’t a mistake, this is where things are heading,” Tiso says.

She remained loyal to the flour she grew up using at her family’s pizza shop until her distributor dropped off the wrong bags during one delivery, and Tiso noticed the dough did not behave how it typically did.

“I tried adjusting a few things on our end, tweaking the process, but nothing was fixing it,” Tiso remembers. “I reached out to my rep from the distribution company, and that’s when he confirmed they had changed the flour. Once I heard that, it all made sense.”

Making the Switch

Seeing the writing on the wall about where the industry was headed, Tiso decided to lean into unbleached, unbromated flour and hasn’t looked back. She emphasizes that the transition didn’t involve one big change to her recipe, but rather several small, intentional adjustments to rebuild strength in her dough.

“With unbleached, unbromated flour, you don’t get that same ‘forced strength’ you get with bromated flour,” she says. “So, you have to build structure more naturally.”

Bill Zonios of Pennsylvania-based Glenside Pizza echoes the sentiment, saying potassium bromate “lets you take shortcuts that you can’t take if you are using unbromated flour.” After learning the additive is banned in other regions, he spent about a month working to adjust his Greek-style pizza dough recipe to use unbromated flour and ultimately reworked his mixing process, adding ingredients more gradually and letting them mix for longer.

“Extra-virgin olive oil is heavy, so it takes a while to mix in,” Zonios says. “Whereas before I could mix my dough in 15 minutes, with unbromated flour, it might take an extra three to five minutes.”

Tiso also started using olive oil, which wasn’t part of her previous dough recipe. She says the oil helps tenderize the dough and provide insurance against the “soufflé effect,” which can cause pizza dough to puff up and then fall. Since the flour switch, Tiso says she watches the dough instead of the clock, making sure it does not overproof. The olive oil has had an unexpected bonus of providing better mouthfeel and a more forgiving bake.

She also switched from fresh yeast to instant yeast to provide more fermentation control and predictability. Since instant yeast is more efficient, Tiso says she ended up using less yeast overall, giving her pizza dough a more even rise.

Creating Dough Structure

The bread-making technique autolyze – or mixing flour and water and allowing the mixture to rest before adding yeast or salt – is another way to create “forced strength” in pizza dough, Tiso says. She gives her unbleached, unbromated dough a 30-minute autolyze, which offers flour enough time to fully hydrate and begin forming gluten naturally.

The result is a stretchier dough that holds gas better and is less susceptible to tearing. Unlike Zonios, Tiso has noticed that mixing time is less – but only when using the autolyze function. “Before, we were probably overmixing for this new flour without realizing it,” She tells Pizza Today. Now, she gives the dough a short mix to incorporate yeast and salt after the autolyze step, then finishes on a low speed.

Evan Weinstein, owner of Maryland-based Underground Pizza Co., specializes in Detroit-style pizza and believes the breadier crust is “more forgiving than a thin crust” when it comes to changing the dough recipe. When he moved away from potassium bromate, he selected a malted flour that he believes instantly improved the dough – even using the same recipe.

Using a malted flour makes the dough more elastic, he says, adding, “The malt was a better option for what we were doing.” In addition to the Detroits served as Underground’s two brick-and-mortar shops, the pizzeria offers other styles during pop-ups at farmers markets.

Reflecting on the Flour Switch

Looking back, all three operators are pleased with their new dough and pizza crust after making the switch to unbleached, unbromated flour.

Tiso says her new dough recipe has better structure and a more consistent rise. For other pizzeria owners making the switch, she emphasizes, “We stopped trying to force the dough to behave like the old flour and instead learned how to work with this one. That’s what changed everything.”

She points out that some of the flours available might seem expensive, but there is an option in every price range.

For Weinstein, the switch to unbleached, unbromated flour had an unanticipated perk: The product he now uses costs $3 less per 50-pound bag. Realizing it was higher quality and cheaper, he recalls thinking, “What are we even discussing?”

At Glenside Pizza, Zonios recalls his kitchen employees initially were unsure about the switch, noting that they’d seen him spend about a month “covered in flour from head to toe” as he dialed in the new recipe. After tasting the product, however, they quickly came around.

Running a shop on the humid East Coast for 25 years, he’s noticed fluctuations in temperature can have a greater impact on dough, so he observed a full year with his new recipe to make sure it was fit for all seasons.

Better for Customers

Pizzeria operators who have made the switch to unbleached, unbromated flour tell Pizza Today they feel good about feeding their customers a more healthful product. If anything, they wish they had learned about bromate sooner. “I know a lot about food. It’s just not something that I researched,” Weinstein says of potassium bromate. “When I looked into it, I said, ‘We’ve got to switch,’ and we made the change.”

Zonios goes a step further, imploring pizzaioli still using bleached and bromated dough to research potassium bromate, adding that New York is just one among dozens of places where its use is banned. “We’ve got to put customers before profits,” he says. “I don’t want to feed my customers anything I wouldn’t feed my own kid.”

KATE LAVIN is Senior Editor at Pizza Today.