Dive Brief:

• The Environmental Working Group has launched a petition calling on companies to stop using potassium bromate as an additive in flour. The additive strengthens dough and lets it rise more, giving the finished bread a whiter appearance.
• In 1999 the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared potassium bromate a possible human carcinogen. It's banned in some other countries, including Canada, Brazil and the European Union.
• FDA rules allow "not more than 0.0075 part for each 100 parts by weight of flour used" of potassium bromate, calcium bromate, potassium iodate, calcium iodate, calcium peroxide, or any combination of two or more of these additives. California Proposition 65 requires food containing potassium bromate to have a warning label, leading many companies selling products in that state to remove the additive to avoid the label.

Dive Insight:

Many baking companies have already removed potassium bromate, although the EWG website lists 86 products identified as still containing the additive.

According to the King Arthur Flour website, removing bromate usually only requires slightly longer mixing times to achieve the same strength as a dough containing bromate. The site also notes that to avoid undesirably increasing the final temperature of the dough due to additional mixing, the initial water temperature must be lower.