Recipe for reform: Local baker helps overturn flour restriction

St. Bruno Bread Co. owner Steven Gottfried has taken some time away from the bakery, cooking up something for the floor of the Louisiana House of Representatives instead. 

After discovering what he calls an “outdated” law that prohibited bakers from using unenriched flour products, Gottfried worked for eight months on an effort to repeal the law from the 1970s. Under that law, bakers like Gottfried had to use flours enriched with vitamins and minerals that get stripped away through the milling process. 

He met with legislators, testified in front of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and shared his perspective on why things needed to be more “modernized.” Sponsored by Representative Dixon McMakin, Louisiana HB 1100, which lifted the restriction on using unenriched flour, passed and officially became law on August 1. 

Gottfried says his effort was inspired by his bakery’s mission to provide the Capital Region with “better bread” while also giving consumers more options. In an Instagram post about the bill’s passage, he said that he sees it as not just a win for his bakery, but for Louisiana bakeries, food entrepreneurs and consumers. 

“Our aim as a bread bakery and a dough manufacturer was to try and really clean up the ingredients and have clean labels,” he says. “[Amending the law] was to try and get as pure of a of a baked good as we possibly could, and to just get more in line with where the times are moving to.”

Enriched flour usually adds vitamins and minerals like riboflavin, niacin, thiamine, folic acid, and iron, but Gottfried says this results in a less pure product and that most enrichments aren’t needed. Flour enrichment was first recommended in the 1940s by what is now the Food and Nutrition Board as a way to combat nutrient deficiencies. 

Gottfried says some people cannot tolerate certain flour enrichments, like folic acid, and that they can upset consumers’ stomachs. 

“The purest example I can give is when people go to Europe or Italy and eat pizza and pasta, and they’re like, ‘I feel great.’ It’s because they’re not getting all of these synthetic enrichments in their stuff,” Gottfried says.

Now, St. Bruno’s retail items are enrichment-free. Gottfried says he’s still in the process of transitioning his brioche and French bread lines to be enrichment-free because the large-batch commercial doughs can be finicky. He also states that he had difficulties sourcing the flour, which Sysco didn’t have. 

“We’re a Baton Rouge brand, and we’re trying to grow far beyond that to the region and eventually nationally,” Gottfried says. “We have such a great team, and I just think if anything, [HB 1100] is just strengthening who we are and what we do and getting our name out there as an innovator.”