Is bleached parchment paper safe to cook with?
When we talk about bleached or unbleached parchment paper what we’re really describing is whether or not the wood pulp used to make the paper has been through a bleaching process. Bleached wood pulp results in paper that is a white color, while unbleached wood pulp retains a woody brown hue. This is due to the presence of lignin, the molecule in plants that also provides structure as well as shades of brown.
The lignin is then recycled and repurposed for a whole range of fascinating uses including as a natural adhesive, biofuel4 and even in medicine5. The wood fibers that remain are made of cellulose, which is pressed and dried to form paper.
In decades past this bleaching process used elemental chlorine, a method linked to the production of dioxins which can cause significant health and environmental problems. Concerns about the health risks of cooking with bleached parchment paper understandably prompted people to seek out an unbleached alternative. However, this is not without its own drawbacks. Unbleached wood fibers can contaminate food with which they come into contact, and since lignin is the component responsible for wood charring when burnt, unbleached parchment paper could be more prone to smoking at high temperatures6.
Thankfully, significant technological improvements in recent years have made the bleaching process safer for everyone. Kana parchment paper is made with pulp bleached using a process that is free from elemental chlorine (ECF), which enables us to create a parchment paper that performs well at high temperatures while also being easy on the environment. in short, bleached parchment paper is perfectly safe to cook with.
The purpose of bleaching wood pulp is to remove the lignin, which is an important step in improving the hygiene and heat resistance of parchment paper.
