I thought bleached flour was for recipes that aspire to rise but involve a lot of additional ingredients that are heavy -- butter, sugar, buttermilk, etc. Bleached flour will effect a better rise where there is a heavy load.
Interestingly enough, my regular non-gourmet grocery store basically switches out all the flours to bleached when the holidays roll around, and you can't find unbleached flour there until after the new year. I assume that's so that customers aren't complaining that their sugary festival foods didn't perform like they remember.
I'm no expert, though. And I don't know what happens if you use bleached flour in a flour-yeast-water-alone scenario. Please do report back.
