One other faint memory comes to mind re bleaching, from something I read somewhere: bleaching was habitual with soft wheats (winter wheat, maybe?), that were typical of southern wheat crops. You can't get the kind of rise (or maybe it's the chew?) from soft wheat that is customary for northern breads without bleaching the flour. Bleaching subsequently became associated with a coincident preference for paler-colored flour, and thus paler resultant baked goods. This was just aesthetic though (although not insignificant); the original purpose was to get the lower-protein southern wheat to somewhat function in northern-style yeast breads.
Like I said, I'm not an expert. I think I may have read this in one of the KAF manuals?
Other southern wheat breads, like classic southern biscuits and some of the cakes, are only really attainable with bleached soft wheat. Like good ole' White Lily. The cliche is that if you try to make a southern biscuit (in my family, this was known as just a "biscuit") with non-southern flour, you will get a hockey puck. I do recall my Mississippi father finding my Chicago mother's biscuits intolerable. He would pull out the dense interiors, and just eat buttered hot crust. At the time, I believe the family conclusion was that it was the altitude we were living in at the time (Colorado).
