According to Peter's extraordinarily diligent research efforts, it seems that the original Lombardi's used a bleached and bromated flour with a protein content around 12-13%. This information can be found at reply 44
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,14920.40.htmlWhile not at All Trumps level, this is a good, strong percentage in line with many of today's bread flours, such as Harvest King. I must confess I am surprised by this information, as I have always assumed that bromate came with All Trumps, and did not precede it.
If Peter is correct, bromated flour was part of the original incarnation of NY-style pizza. Given that the original formulas, for Lombardi's, and Totonno's, and Patsy's, etc., are the holy grail of pizza making, and given that bromated flour has been in common commercial use for over 100 years, one would think that bromated flour would be given more than a passing nod by the popularizers, given that pizza dough at its best comprises four ingredients. A guy like Reinhart will spend half a page on diastatic malt powder, the use of which is almost completely unnecessary in the U.S.; blather on for pages about the difference between a poolish and a biga; and go into orgasms over his fatuous and bastardized pain l'ancienne method; yet he cannot offer an informed, historical, dispassionate disquisition on the one product that would do more for the average home baker than any of these complicated and often esoteric baking methods. I must ask why.
Certainly health concerns cannot be factor. California may have banned bromate, but the rest of the country is usually unconcerned about that soon-to-be bankrupt state's fads and obsessions. I'm sure Peter Reinhart or Alton Brown would have no problem recommending a good craft beer to go with their artisanal pizza formulation, but that toxic beverage can be proven to have caused more deaths in one year than bromate has caused in a century of use.
I'm a free market kind of a guy, and Reinhart and his ilk have every right to sell books and make great living. They have, in many ways, done much good. But they are, in many ways, elitist and gnostic, with their own private language and ritual. That's all well and good, but it is instructive to remember that simplicity is key, and that popularization is not necessarily vulgar or decadent.
Thought for the day:
Given that the original Lombardi's used bromated flour, if this were France, would bromated flour be mandated by law, if one wanted to call one's product NY-style?
