Baking Bread

[Frank1]

I would like to hear from some of the other members (especially from some of the members who not live in the USA) concerning baking bread. First I'll start with a question. How many of you who have baked bread use sugar as one of the ingredients? The reason I ask is because virtually all of the recipes for baking bread will list sugar as one of the ingredient because as they say, "Sugar is necessary because yeast needs sugar to feed on." I do not understand why they say that. I have been baking home-made bread for quite some time. At first I used to use sugar and one day my wife said to me that her mother never used sugar to bake bread. Furthermore, when my wife used to bake bread she never used sugar. My parents were borne in Italy as was my wife's. Since my wife mentioned that to me, I have never used sugar and the bread comes out just fine. The dough rises just as well as when I used to use sugar. Unless I'm mistaken, using sugar is an "American" thing. I can not understand why most people use the sugar. So from the members who do not live in the USA, I would like to hear from you as to weather or not, most of the bakers use sugar in your land. For those members who live here in the USA who bakes bread using sugar, I challenge you to try it without the sugar and see how it works. Do everything as you normally do, but eliminate the sugar or any other sweetener. After you try it, post back and let me know how it works. I am curious to hear from some of the other members about this.

 

[Maguscreed]

I don't have a lot of experience with baking bread, but I used to do bagels a lot, never included egg or sugar in them and they always came out great. ...granted a proper bagel is boiled and not baked....

 

[Imperfect1]

You're right, that most bread recipes (at least, in the US) call for sugar, but I notice that the ingredients lists of many wonderful bakery breads usually don't include sugar. So it's probably just a preference choice.

 

[Ambimom]

Might I suggest Freshloaf.com. I've been baking bread every 10 days for years. I use flour, water, salt, and my own sourdough starter. That's it. Tuscan bread leaves out the salt. For white bread I'll use yeast and a little milk. Sugar in bread recipes is probably there to activate yeast but not necessary. You can use diastatic malt instead. Bread is a "living" thing and a lot of bread-baking is about learning the feel and smell of dough.