The Many Roles of Sugar In Baking
Sugar is one of the most important ingredients in baking. It plays many roles, from adding sweetness to providing structure and texture. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the different types of sugar and how they are used in baking. We’ll also share some tips for using sugar in your baking recipes. So if you’re looking to create perfect baked treats, keep reading!
Some of the roles of sugar include:
- Adds flavor and sweetness
- Softens
- Retains moisture
- Improves shelf-life
- Contributes color
- Helps aerate
Flavor
Sugar can impart a flavor to baked goods because the sugar itself is flavorful. For example, maple syrup, honey, and coconut sugar have very distinct flavors and these will come through when you bake with them instead of granulated sugar. The sugar caramelizes when heated, developing flavorful compounds so even white sugar can contribute a flavor if it’s heated for long enough. Think of adding sugar, not only to impart sweetness, but also to contribute flavor. Use different types of sugar in your recipes to give a more complex flavor to baked goods.
Texture
Sugar disrupts gluten formation when they dissolve. Adding sugar to baked goods means that the proteins that make up gluten are less likely to assemble and will not assemble so easily. This means your baked goods will be more tender than without. Sugar also disrupts protein coagulation and starch gelatinization, increasing the temperature at which these structure-building activities happen. This delay leads to a more tender product.
Of course, if you add too much sugar to a recipe, it may disrupt the structure so much that your cake collapses or can cause a crumblier texture. On the other hand, sugar can also lend a crunchy or crispy texture in recipes like cookies. Rolling cookies in sugar can draw out moisture on the surface of the cookie. This dries them out, leading to cracks and a crunchier texture.
You may also sprinkle the surface of baked goods with turbinado or a coarse raw sugar before baking. This contributes a sweet crunch texture to the surface of scones and biscuits, to the edges of slice and bake cookies that were rolled in sugar before slicing, and to the top crust of pies.
Moisture
Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs water from its surroundings. More sugar in a cake recipe contributes to a moister texture and mouthfeel. By trapping water, sugar slows the drying out process of baked goods. The hygroscopic nature of sugar means that it dissolves, turning into a syrup and so it contributes to cookies spreading when baked.
Shelf Life
Sugar improves the stability and shelf-life of baked goods. Remember that sugar is hygroscopic, meaning that it absorbs moisture from its surroundings. Sugar slows drying out in baked goods, giving you more time to enjoy them before they become stale and dry. For this reason, recipes with reduced sugar often have to compensate with more moisture and/or fatter to improve perceived moistness and mouthfeel, but also to prevent baked goods from drying out too quickly.
Color and Caramelization
There are two ways that sugar contributes color in baking: caramelization and Maillard browning. With caramelization, you have to heat sugar above 150 °C (300 °F) to color and caramelize it. On the other hand, Maillard browning occurs much more readily, even at room temperature, especially in the presence of proteins and at high pH.
Aeration
Recall that with the creaming often used for cakes and cookies, the first step involves beating together the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This takes several minutes. This is a mechanical way for bakers to incorporate air in baked goods and is one of the reasons that this step is considered a method of leavening that people often skip over.
Actually, if you don’t spend enough time on this step, your baked goods may end up dense.
The same goes with meringue and egg-white based desserts. Dissolved sugar stabilizes whipped egg whites so that they can hold their shape and hold air.
Substituting Sugars
Use the weight, not the volume. Because the size of the particles and crystals varies so greatly from fondant sugar to coarse sugar, replacing one sugar for another is tricky. You will need to consider weight, not volume, to make substitutions without having an impact on flavor.
Consult the baking ingredient conversion chart to see for yourself: 1 cup of powdered sugar weighs 125 grams, whereas 1 cup of granulated sugar weighs 200 grams. That’s a big difference. It becomes even greater as you scale up a recipe or work on larger batch sizes. If you want to substitute one type of sugar for another, use the weight as your guide. Replace them gram for gram.
Consider the Texture
You need to understand the role and impact of each type of sugar in order to replace one with another. You also need to have a clear goal in mind in order to make smart substitution decisions.
Granulated sugar will give cookies a crispier edge. Brown sugar will lead to a softer or more chewy texture. Brown sugar may reduce the spread of cookies ever so slightly. Superfine sugar will increase the spread because it dissolves into a syrup faster.
Pearl and coarse sugars like turbinado don’t dissolve readily and resist melting even at high temperatures. It would be a terrible idea to replace granulated sugar with a coarse sugar. This would make your baked goods very gritty and add a crunchy texture from undissolved sugar.
Consider the Flavor Difference
You also need to consider taste when swapping one sugar for another: granulated sugar is a white sugar that has no flavor except for sweetness. Muscovado sugar adds a lot of earthiness to a recipe through its molasses and mineral content. You may want to replace a portion of white sugar with muscovado or brown sugar, instead of all of it.
Replacing Sugar with Syrup or Honey in Baking
Maple syrup and honey are both liquids. You may have to reduce the quantity of other liquids in your recipe when replacing sugar with either of these. Or if there aren’t any liquids in the recipe, increase the flour: add an extra 1 tablespoon of flour for every 60 mL (¼ cup) of maple syrup or molasses added)
Maple syrup is mostly sucrose, just like granulated sugar, so it’s as sweet. This means you can substitute one for the other, cup for cup.Honey is sweeter than regular granulated sugar so you may need to adjust from the extra sweetness honey brings.
Storage
If stored properly, the shelf-life of sugar is forever, meaning it won’t spoil or go bad.
For syrups with water, storage varies:
- Maple syrup must be stored in the refrigerator to slow the growth of mold and yeast cells
- Honey doesn’t have to be refrigerated because of its acidity combined with a high concentration of sugar, it’s not going to mold. You may notice it crystallize over time, but the sugar can be redissolved with gentle heating.
Sugar Conversion Chart
