The recipe for Utopia Bagels has remained unchanged since the popular bakery opened in Queens in 1981. Louie and Ernie’s Pizza in the Bronx has used the same ingredients in its slice for nearly as long.
But if lawmakers in Albany prevail, these bakers and thousands of others in New York State will have to stop using a key component, bromated flour, potentially raising costs and changing the character of their breads, bagels and pizza crusts.
Last month by a wide margin, legislators passed the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, which bans potassium bromate (along with propylparaben and Red Dye No. 3) from any food sold in the state. The bill now goes to Gov. Kathy Hochul; a spokeswoman said only that the governor “will review” it.
Used by an estimated 80 to 90 percent of commercial bakeries in the state, bromated flour makes doughs springier, stretchier and more consistent. Sam Silverman, a New York bagel evangelist who runs tours, classes and an annual gathering called BagelFest, said that after bromated flour became widely used in the 1940s, it helped create the signature modern New York bagel: tall and fluffy, with significant chew. In pizza, it produces an airy crust with enough structure to hold sauce and cheese, and enough pliability to be folded in half.
“Everyone wants that ‘Saturday Night Fever’ slice,” said Tori Tiso, the owner of Tori T’s Pizzeria in Malverne, N.Y.
But since the 1980s, when studies first linked potassium bromate to thyroid and kidney cancers in rats, it has gradually been removed from the food supply in most of the world. It’s banned in China, Canada, India, the European Union and many other countries. Starting next January, it will be illegal in California, as part of the so-called “Skittles ban” signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023.
Frank Scavio, a Brooklyn native who co-owns five Paesan’s Pizza shops in the Albany area, has mounted a campaign to carve out an exception for bromated flour.
“If we’re we going to change something New York is famous for, we should be sure there’s a good reason for it,” he said, pointing out that the carbonized flour in a well-charred pizza crust and the alcohol in vodka sauce can also be considered carcinogenic.
For customers, the most likely outcome of the ban will be higher prices, as many bakers have to switch to more expensive flours, and hire more skilled labor to produce the same results.
Potassium bromate is just one of many chemical “dough improvers” that have been routinely added to commercial white flour since the 1940s. All are meant to take the guesswork — some call it skill — out of baking bread.
“It accommodates for less-knowledgeable staff and ensures consistency,” which is the hardest thing for any bakery to pull off, said Mark Bello, the owner of Pizza School NYC, who teaches both amateurs and professionals. “When you go to a particular slice shop, you want your pizza to be the same, to remind you of why you went there in the first place.”
The proposed ban has already touched off a kind of identity crisis, and some conflict, among the state’s old-school bakers, who stick fiercely to tradition, and newer craft bakers, who pride themselves on natural ingredients. Many are already using unbromated flours.
At age 25, Jesse Spellman of Utopia Bagels is feeling the weight of generational responsibility. The original location on Utopia Parkway in Whitestone, Queens, still uses one of the last bagel-specific ovens in New York, a huge Cutler model from 1947. (A bagel oven is designed around the shape of the bagel for maximum airflow and even heat.)
Mr. Spellman is resigned to giving up bromated flour, he said, but has much research and development to do to match the exact qualities of his grandfather’s product.
For 45 years, each hand-twisted Utopia bagel has been made with Gold Medal All Trumps flour, one of the country’s longtime staples for commercial baking, along with Pillsbury’s Balancer and So Strong flours. (Both are now made by General Mills.)
The muscular brand names refer to the flours’ extra-high protein content, produced from “hard” wheat that creates strong, stretchy gluten strands. Many craft bakers, and more and more commercial ones, use the King Arthur Baking Company’s version, Sir Lancelot, which is not bromated. And unbromated versions of the General Mills flours are available, at a higher cost.
“These other flours are two times the money for the same or even a little worse of a product,” Mr. Spellman said. “Bagels are going to hit $3 or $4, people are going to be mad.” (Utopia’s bagels are $2 each; craft bagels, like those at Apollo Bagels, start at $2.50 and go up from there.)
Ms. Tiso, who grew up working at Louie and Ernie’s Pizza, her father’s Bronx slice shop, struck out on her own and opened Tori T’s on Long Island in 2024.
She started using unbromated flour eight months ago, and tinkered with her recipe accordingly. She said adding olive oil to her dough helped with browning, and swapping in dry yeast for fresh provided springiness. “It gave me back that pop,” she said.
The traditional New York pizza crust she was raised on has a quick-rising dough powered by yeast and sugar and built for speed. “When you’re turning out pizzas for the lunch rush and then for after school and then dinner, you can’t take chances,” she said.
But she is happy to be moving away from shortcuts like bromated flour and toward the ingredients used at high-end new pizza shops like Ceres and Ops, where slow-rising, naturally leavened doughs made from local grains are the standard. “It’s good for the industry to have cleaner ingredients and more knowledge,” she said.
Mr. Scavio, who is crusading against the proposed ban, is skeptical of the virtues of such pies.
“Those guys are just trying to justify charging $40 or $50 for a pizza,” he said.
