How Does Sugar Affect Bread Dough? The Effects of Sugar Explained

hello friends and welcome back to the channel in today's episode we'll talk about sugar syrup honey treacle molasses whatever it may be sweetening i will explain the effect that it has on yeast and the dough that you're trying to ferment and we will also clear up one big misconception that people have about sugar and yeast so ask yourself this question why are you adding sugar to your dough is it because you're making a sweet dough which is fair enough or is it because you want to help the yeast i'm seeing this more often than not people take some water they add their yeast they add the sugar they mix it all together and they leave it for 10 minutes thinking that somehow this is gonna help sugar is hygroscopic meaning that it absorbs water and what else is hygroscopic in bread baking salt so both those ingredients compete with the yeast for water the less water yeast can absorb the less active it will be so sugar acts quite similarly to salt and it will definitely slow down fermentation so it doesn't matter what your grandma said or what you read in some housewives food blog sugar hinders fermentation and you should never use the thinking that will speed it up so let's do an experiment so you clearly see what happens i'm gonna make three loaves of bread one with no sugar one with five percent sugar one with fifteen percent sugar we will treat them all the same way same temperature same everything the only difference will be the amount of sugar that we add so let's start with the regular dough and if you are interested in the principles of baking i have more videos explaining temperature control how to knead your dough how fat affects bread dough and when you should add it and also videos explaining every single step of the baking process so go and check them out after this well let's get on with these breads then to give all of them a fair chance and the same treatment i'm not needing them first of all i'm just going to mix the dough together and then knead them one by one that way i will spend less time between making each dough so on the left we have the dough with no sugar in the middle the one with five percent sugar and on the right the one with 15 sugar i'll just quickly shape them up and knead them fully i will not need them for a long time because again i don't want to spend a lot of time between each dough so will only be three minute kneading which is sufficient for this experiment so while i'm working this though let's talk more about sugar and yeast like i said earlier when you add sugar it rubs the yeast to water but yeast does need sugar to be active the thing is that it doesn't need your sugar it makes the sugar so in very simple terms yeast breaks down the starch in the flour creating simple sugars to feed itself so it will always make enough sugar for itself but a quick note here whilst i'm kneading the dough the first dough felt pretty normal the middle one with five percent sugar more or less the same but the last one with 15 sugar is a lot stickier sugar does act a little bit like a liquefying agent also so keep that in mind it will make your dough a bit more sticky actually my brioche recipe i suggest adding the sugar later on in the mixing process for this exact reason so all three pieces of dough are fully kneaded get these out of the way clean out this mess you can see the last door stuck to my hands now we can start fermentation and you will clearly see the difference and of course they're still in the same order the one on the left with no sugar the one in the middle five percent one on the right fifteen percent so sugar will significantly start slowing down fermentation when it gets up to about 10 percent but as we will see further down the line even 5 will slow it down so if you are making sweet dough then what you can do is just use more yeast on the other hand of course you can just leave it to ferment for longer so there's different ways to go about it i'm not hating on sugar you should definitely use sugar if you need to just use it for the right reason so after checking the temperature it's more or less the same there's a 0.3 of a degree difference the middle dough came out a little bit warmer but will not affect it too much it will still rise more slowly than the dough with no sugar so i'm going to ferment all of these for the same amount of time we'll do one hour then give them a fold then we'll do another hour then we'll pre-shape them then we'll give them 15 minutes then we'll do the final shaping and then do one hour of final proof this would be the amount of time that i would give a regular loaf of bread so then let's talk about time the longer and more slowly the dough will ferment the more the yeast will break down the starch in it and create more sugars so extreme examples like sourdough bread which is fermented for 24 hours 36 hours or even your regular yeasted overnight loaf they will accumulate a lot more sugar in the dough that's why when you go and bake a bread that has been fermented for a long time the crust is a lot more caramelized so that might be one of the reasons why you want to add sugar to your dough you want the crust to be more brown and that's fair enough that's one way to achieve it personally i never add sugar to get a more caramelized crust if i want my bread to be dark i just bake it for slightly longer now it's been two hours and from the top down these look about the same but when you pick them up and look at them from the side the right one is clearly a pancake and it's still sticky now i'm going to pre-shape them and let them rest before the final shaping so let's talk about other kinds of sweetening at the beginning of the video i had white sugar brown sugar some treacle and honey as far as i can tell all of them have the same kind of effect they just taste different mainly so depending on what kind of bread you're making you may use one or the other for instance my rye bread recipe includes a large amount of tree core that's what gives it that rich dark color if you are adding sugar to your recipe then i would always suggest pouring it into the water or into the liquid that we are using for your dough then stirring it until it dissolves it is a lot easier to dissolve the sugar in the liquid then try to work it into the dough okay so done the final shaping now we're ready for the final proof here and again looking down from the top these look quite similar but now you can clearly see the difference as they're puffing up it has been the final hour of fermentation and clearly the dough with no sugar in it has puffed up the most the one in the middle slightly less volume and the one on the right still a pancake so i'm not going to do anything special here i'm just going to slash them and pop them in the oven and of course like i mentioned earlier if you want to add your sugar just leave your dough for longer it will puff up eventually this is just to show the effect of sugar on the dough so our three loaves have been fully baked and obviously only one of them was fully fermented the other two are clearly underproofed so that's it the experiment's over simple as that so in conclusion think about why adding sugar add it for the right reasons sugar should be added to either darken the crust as you can see that has clearly happened here or it should be added to sweeten the dough to counteract the effect of sugar you should either leave your dough to ferment for longer make it slightly warmer or use more yeast if you are using sugar the dough might get a bit more sticky and harder to work with keep that in mind and the yeast makes its own food it doesn't need your help so just let it do its thing and always ask yourself why are we using the ingredients that we use and what do they do to the dough and if you have that curiosity and you want to learn more check out my steps of baking playlist and my principles of baking playlist it's a lot more valuable to know the how and why instead of just knowing a recipe you shouldn't just do things because someone told you to check the facts and find out for yourself and as always thank you for watching and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: ChainBaker

Views: 352,905

Keywords: baker, baking, homebaker, learning, handmade, artisan, fresh, loaf, sourdough, yeasted, bread, leavened, food, chainbaker

Id: AqFeXxa_NTk

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021