Except…salt is one the four basic tastes, isn’t it? Pepper is not. Salt, sweet, bitter, sour? Sugar doesn’t just make things sweet, some things DO indeed need sugar. Why shouldn’t it be the same for salt?
After being on a low-salt diet for a year as a child, I found store-bought bread almost inedible because of the saltiness. And later, when I was making bread from scratch every week, yes, I didn’t use any salt.