Simple Sweet Bread Recipe | Julie Blanner (2024)

FAQs

What does too much sugar do to bread dough? ›

A dough that has a high percentage of sugar (10% or more) will need more yeast than a bread made without sugar and will take a longer time to rise. A dough with more than 5% sugar (to flour weight) will brown on the surface earlier in the baking time than a dough with no added sugar or with less than 5%.

Additionally, when dough is fermented slower, the complex starches and sugars can ferment fully. These fermented sugars create an alcohol-based ingredient known as maltose, which works to make the bread taste sweeter while also deepening the aroma.

Butter, technically a dough enrichment, tenderizes bread dough and limits gluten development, yielding a softer, more tender crumb and a richer flavor.

Mix the batter just until the ingredients are combined, and then stop. If there are a few lumps in the batter, that's okay. To ensure that your quick bread rises properly, it's important to use room-temperature ingredients. Take the butter, eggs and milk out of the refrigerator an hour or two before you plan to bake.

Yeast converts sugar to energy and carbon dioxide, unless there is no oxygen available (as in fermentation in a sealed vessel), when it converts it to less energy, alcohol and carbon dioxide. So yes, sugar is used up while bread rises.

Mostly all breads make use of white sugar or castor sugar because sugar performs two functions in baking breads- acting as a food for the yeast and helping in giving some colour to the final baked bread.

While sugar and other sweeteners provide "food" for yeast, too much sugar can damage yeast, drawing liquid from the yeast and hampering its growth. Too much sugar also slows down gluten development. Add extra yeast to the recipe or find a similar recipe with less sugar. Sweet yeast doughs will take longer to rise.

Sugar is optional; a little bit makes yeast happy, but too much—generally, more than 1/4 cup per 3 cups of flour—slows yeast down.

It's all about the starch

So when you add potato to your bread dough you're upping the dough's starch content, effectively increasing the resulting loaf's total liquid retention — which translates to bread with soft, moist texture and a long shelf life.

What two chemicals must be in a quick bread recipe in order for it to have a chemical leavening reaction which gives off carbon dioxide and makes quick breads rise? ›

Combining baking soda with an acid produces a chemical reaction that releases carbon dioxide gas which causes the food to expand and become fluffy.

Quick breads use the chemical leavening agents of baking powder and/or baking soda. Baking powder and baking soda do not require time for rising, so the batter for quick bread is cooked immediately after mixing.

Adjust the other ingredients: You can try adding a bit more of the other ingredients to balance out the sweetness. For example, you can add a little more flour, butter, or any other dry ingredients called for in the recipe. This can help dilute the extra sugar and bring the flavors back into balance [1].

The more sugar in yeast dough, the more slowly it will rise. Remember, sugar is hygroscopic. And in yeast dough, this means it can deprive yeast of the moisture it needs to grow.

A little sugar, up to three percent, speeds up fermentation. The yeast processes the added sugar first, saving the time it would take to break down starch into sugar. With over three percent sugar, however, the fermentation rate no longer increases. [1] Above six percent, sugar actually decreases the rate.

However, if too much sugar is added (these simple vanilla cupcakes had twice as much as they should have), then not only do they rise to the extreme but the structure takes so long to set (these were baked for 15 minutes longer than a normal batch) that they then collapse dramatically towards the end of baking.