I love to bake, and a lot of the recipes I use call for bleached flour. I’ve tried some of the recipes with unbleached flour instead (and vice versa), and they didn’t turn out as good.
I recently found out bleached flour is banned in other countries, so if it ever gets banned in the US, I will have to modify my current recipes or find new ones. It took me a while to find recipes I’m comfortable with, so I really don’t want to have to change them.
From what I’ve read, bleached flour doesn’t really seem bad (obviously not as healthy as unbleached), but I’m wondering if you think it should be or will be banned in the US eventually? Do you think it eventually being banned is something I should worry about?
There may something else that needs adjustment in your recipe if you don’t like the results using unbleached flour. Also, there are SO many brands it’s awful to know how to choose and can be expensive to try them all.
America’s Test Kitchen is a GREAT resource for modification of recipes and you could email them your question but I am sure there are many, many mentions of this on their website and podcasts.
Well it’s fine for all of Europe and many other parts of the world to use unbleached flour and even go as far to ban it. The way you say that it’s “not that bad” to have flour with added chlorine or other chemicals you could say that it’s “much worse than”. There is good reason that countries around the world ban chemical additives and I’m sure they have great bakers there too! So yes, you probably should worry even if America doesn’t ban it soon.
I’m in the UK, I consider things like US flour and chicken, or anything else that’s been bleached to be avoided. If it’s how you like it, have at it, but there’s good reason many Brits panicked when US food imports were mentioned after Brexit.
I’m sure it will taste better. Anything store bought especially bread taste like soap! Thought I was losing my mind until I googled why it tasted like that. And it was the BLEACHED FLOUR that was doing it.
>…but I’m wondering if you think it should be or will be banned in the US eventually?
Well, no, it won’t be. Luckily, in this case, it also shouldn’t be (although that’s not always a given). For an overview on what bleached flour is and why it is useful, see here.
If it were banned for some reason, heat-treating the flour would be a viable alternative to bleaching it; even just atmospheric oxygen alone can do so somewhat. Other ways of oxidizing the flour at commercial scale would soon be invented so that our cakes could keep rising properly.
between various flours I find the main difference is adjusting the quantity.
bleached, unbleached, bread flour, cake flour, whole wheat, all such flours can be used.
They will slightly alter the final products texture and taste, and require a change in the ratio of flour to liquids to oils etc.
There are many different ways of bleaching your flour. One of which is letting it in contact with air for some time. Bleaching has been done for centuries and is perfectly fine.
One method or another may or may not be hazardous. I’d default to your local food industry organization standards.
If you can get unbleached flour, just toss in the microwave for a bit and you’ll bleach it yourself(BIY?)