30Sugar, fat, salt and leaveners in baking

A cake, a loaf or a cookie is built from a short list of ingredients, and each one has a job beyond its taste.

• Sugar sweetens, but it also browns the crust, softens the crumb and feeds yeast.
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• Fat makes a crumb tender.
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• Salt steadies a bread dough.
• Leaveners fill a dough or batter with gas so it rises.

30.1 Sugars and syrups

What sugar does in a bake

Only two ingredients see more use in a bakeshop than sugar. Sweetness is only one of its jobs.

• It browns. Heat on sugar alone gives caramelization: the sugar melts, darkens and takes on new flavors. When sugar meets protein in strong heat, the Maillard reaction browns the food instead. Both give crusts their color and much of their flavor, in bread, cookies and cakes alike.
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• It tenderizes. No ingredient does more to keep a baked good tender. Sugar holds back the forming of gluten, the stretchy protein network in a dough, and a soft crumb depends on that.
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• It makes cookies spread. Sugar is one of the things that decide how far a cookie flows across the pan.
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• It shapes texture. In ice cream, sugar adds body and helps stop lactose, the milk sugar, from forming the crystals that make a frozen dessert feel grainy.
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• It preserves, as long as there is enough of it.
• It feeds yeast. Sugar gives yeast food it can use at once, so the yeast makes more carbon dioxide and the dough rises faster and more evenly.
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How sugar crystallizes, and how cooks stop it, belongs with heat. see chapter 7: Sugar How yeast turns sugar into gas is covered with fermentation. see chapter 26: Alcohol and gas

Simple and double sugars

Every sugar is a carbohydrate, built from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Chemists group sugars by how their atoms are arranged.

• Monosaccharides, the simple sugars, are single units. Dextrose (another name for glucose) is the main one. Fructose (also called levulose) occurs in honey and in many fruits; galactose is a sugar of milk. Simple sugars are slow to crystallize.
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• Disaccharides are double sugars. Sucrose, ordinary table sugar, is the chief example; maltose from cereals and lactose from milk are two more.
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• Polysaccharides include starches, dextrins and cellulose. Bakers leave these aside when they talk about sugar.
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Simple and double sugars both sweeten, but they act differently in a finished product, so one cannot simply replace the other. Most names of sugars end in "-ose". Sucrose is the chemical name of the sugar taken from sugar cane and sugar beet.

Food labeling rules sort these words too. On a nutrition label, "sugars" means all the simple and double sugars. A "sweetener", by contrast, is a food additive: the sugar alcohols (such as sorbitol, xylitol and erythritol) and intense sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.

From cane and beet to the bag

Raw sugar reaches the refinery full of impurities and is not legal to eat as it is. At the refinery it goes through several steps.

• It is washed and boiled.
• It is filtered.
• It is boiled down under a vacuum until crystals of the wanted size form; the vacuum keeps the sugar from caramelizing.
• A centrifuge spins the syrup away from the crystals.
• A drum of hot air dries them, and the sugar is packed.

Beet sugar starts differently, with sliced beets soaked in hot water to draw out the sugar, then cleaned, filtered and concentrated, and after that it follows the same steps as cane. Machines handle the sugar from start to finish.

Refined sugar must be at least 99.5% sucrose.

Brown and yellow sugars come only from cane refineries. The syrup left after the white sugar is spun off is cleaned again and boiled a second time. Its crystals are spun but not washed, so a film of syrup stays on them, and that film carries the color and flavor. Brown sugar can also be refined sugar with molasses added back. Light brown sugar is less refined than granulated sugar and coated with molasses, and dark brown is less refined again.

Bone char and vegan baking. Many refiners whiten cane sugar by filtering it through bone char, made from cattle bones. Other refiners use granular carbon or an ion-exchange system. A company that uses bone char for white sugar also uses it in the brown sugar and icing sugar made from it. Beet sugar never goes through bone char, and nor do sucanat and turbinado sugar. In Canada, only the Vancouver cane refinery uses it, while the beet factory in Taber, Alberta, and the Montreal cane refinery do not.

Kinds of sugar and what they suit

Syrups and other sweeteners

Molasses is what is left when cane juice is refined into white sugar. It holds sucrose and other sugars, organic acids and minerals. Light molasses comes from the first boiling of the cane juice. Dark molasses comes from the second; it is less sweet and has more flavor.

Corn syrup and glucose. Glucose occurs naturally in most fruit, but the glucose bakers buy is made from corn starch. It comes as a thick syrup, adjusted to an even thickness and graded by its dextrose equivalent (DE). Corn syrup is the form most cooks know. It holds glucose and maltose in amounts that vary with how it was made. It does four jobs:

• softens texture
• adds volume
• stops sugar from crystallizing
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• lifts flavor

Light corn syrup is clear and may carry added vanilla or salt; dark corn syrup is light corn syrup mixed with refiners' syrup.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is corn syrup in which an enzyme has turned part of the glucose into fructose, which tastes sweeter than sucrose. It is about half fructose and half dextrose, and it is the main sweetener in factory-made bread and buns.

Dextrose is chemically the same as glucose and is sold as dry crystals. Compared with sucrose, it:

• ferments easily
• helps bread and buns brown
• stays dry rather than greasy, which is why it goes into doughnut sugars
• draws in and holds moisture
• slows crystals forming in syrups, candies and fondant
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Glucose is only about three quarters as sweet as sugar, and a syrup is partly water, so more of it is needed to replace sugar. Multiply the weight of sugar by the factor below.

These syrups do not suit every bake. A white layer cake made with glucose or HFCS in place of sugar browns too much.

Honey is nectar that bees have changed with an enzyme, invertase, which makes it essentially an invert sugar. On average it is about 40% fructose, 35% dextrose and 15% water, with traces of ash, wax and gum; the exact make-up and flavor depend on the flowers.

Bakers reach for honey for four reasons.

• to sweeten
• for its own flavor
• for the moist bite of gingerbread and certain cookies
• to help goods keep

It comes in several forms.

• Comb honey is still in the comb the bees built. Chunk honey is pieces of comb in liquid honey.
• Liquid honey is taken from the comb and strained; most bakers use this kind.
• Creamed honey is liquid honey given body with some crystallized honey stirred in. Granulated honey has crystallized, and dehydrated honey comes as granules.
• Blended honey mixes honey with manufactured invert sugar, or blends several honeys for color, aroma and consistency.

In the United States honey is graded by color, from white (orange blossom) through amber (clover) to dark amber (sage, buckwheat).

Honey pulls moisture from the air, so keep it tightly covered, dry and at room temperature. A fridge or freezer will not spoil its color or taste, but it may make it crystallize sooner. To bring crystallized honey back to liquid, warm it in a double boiler, no hotter than 58°C (136°F).

Malt is a sweetener made mostly from barley. As the grain sprouts, its own enzymes turn much of its starch into maltose, which has a flavor of its own. It is sold in four forms.

• Malt flour causes trouble unless it is weighed exactly.
• Malt syrup is heavy, bulky and sticky.
• Malt extract.
• Dried malt is the easiest to use, as long as it is kept away from damp.

Malt also comes in two kinds.

• Diastatic malt is dried at a low heat, so its enzymes stay active.
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• Non-diastatic malt is darker. High heat has killed its enzymes.
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Both kinds bring sweetness, color and flavor. Their particular value in bread is timing: yeast eats glucose and fructose early in fermentation, and turns to the malt sugar later, so malt keeps feeding the dough. Malt does more besides.

• It draws in moisture, so bread keeps longer.
• It helps the crust brown.
• It adds vitamins and amino acids.
• It strengthens gluten.

Flour from a good mill usually carries enough enzymes already, so most bread bakers do not need diastatic malt. Where it is used, medium activity is the recommended level.

To swap dry diastatic malt for malt syrup, use about the same weight; the factory has already raised the enzyme level of the dry kind. The dry kind holds about 20% less moisture, so add water to make up the difference.

Maple syrup is maple sap boiled down. Sap is only 2 to 3% sugar, so almost 40 liters of it make 1 liter of syrup, and that makes maple syrup costly. Canada produces 84% of the world's supply and the United States the rest.

Maple syrup is sorted into Grade A and Processing Grade, which carries no color name. Grade A comes in four color and flavor classes:

• golden, with a delicate taste
• amber and rich
• dark and robust
• very dark and strong

For baking, the darker syrups are better, because their flavor is stronger. Maple sugar, the solid left when nearly all the water is boiled off, also carries maple flavor and can stand in for cane sugar. Pancake or table syrup is not maple syrup: it is cheap glucose or corn syrup with caramel color and maple flavoring.

Other syrups. Agave nectar comes from the sap at the heart of the agave, a desert succulent that is also the source of tequila; it is made in much the way sugar is. Sorghum syrup is the boiled-down sap of sorghum cane.

Sugar substitutes

Sugar substitutes are food additives, and a new one is allowed only after a safety review and a change to the food regulations. Those approved include:

• saccharin
• sucralose
• stevia
• aspartame
• acesulfame-potassium
• thaumatin
• polydextrose
• sugar alcohols such as sorbitol, isomalt, maltitol and xylitol
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Take care when you swap one into a recipe. Even when it tastes about as sweet, a straight one-for-one swap rarely works, because sucrose does more than sweeten.

• It gives the mix bulk.
• It takes up moisture.
• It tenderizes.
• It keeps the product moist so it lasts longer.
• It gives color as it caramelizes.

A substitute may do none of these.

Try it: dry heat on sugar

Watch sugar caramelize.

• Spread half a cup of sugar evenly in an iron skillet and heat it slowly until every crystal has melted.
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• Pour half onto a greased, warm plate.
• Stir baking soda quickly into the rest and pour it onto a second plate.
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• Compare the two for color, texture and flavor.

30.2 What fat does in baking

What fats are, and the kinds a kitchen keeps, from butter and lard to shortening and oil, are covered with fats and oils. see chapter 19: Fats and oils

In a dough or batter, fat has four jobs that shape the eating.

• Tenderness. Worked in in large enough amounts, fat cuts the gluten strands in flour short. That is why baking fats are called shortenings. Lard was the classic one.
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• Lightness. When fat is beaten with a paddle, it can build up a mass of small air pockets. This is its creaming ability, and it matters most in cakes: a fat that creams well gives a lighter cake.
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• Ease of handling. Fat lets the gluten network stretch more easily, and makes the dough easier to mix and to work. Bakers call this lubrication.
• Moistness. Fat slows the drying out of both doughs and cake batters. For this job a shortening that is 100% fat does better than butter or margarine, which are not all fat.
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Fat also brings food energy in concentrated form, and many of the fatty acids the body needs.

Choosing a fat by its plastic range

Butter falls short here. At 10°C (50°F) it is close to too hard to work, and at 27°C (80°F) it is already too soft. The plastic range of each kitchen fat is compared with fats and oils. see chapter 19: The fats a kitchen uses: butter, lard, shortening, oils

30.3 Salt in baking

The kinds of salt, where it comes from and how to store it are covered with seasonings. see chapter 20: What salt is

In a yeast dough, salt does three things: it controls fermentation, it conditions the dough, and it gives flavor.

Salt and fermentation

Controlling fermentation is the most important of the three.

• Salt slows the yeast, keeping its growth in healthy check.
• It stops unwanted bacteria and wild fermentations from taking hold.
• It keeps the dough from turning too acidic.
• Because it holds fermentation back, less of the sugar is used up before baking, and the crust browns better in the oven.

Salt and the dough

Salt tightens and strengthens gluten, so it adds strength to any flour. Firmer gluten holds water and gas better, and the dough can stretch as it rises without tearing. This matters most when the dough water is soft or the flour is immature; in either case, using the full amount of salt helps keep the dough from turning soft and sticky.

Salt does not bleach the crumb. It does give a finer grain with thin cell walls, though, and that makes the inside of the loaf look whiter.

Salt and flavor

Without salt, bread tastes flat and dull. Only part of the difference is the taste of salt itself. Salt also brings out the flavors that the yeast creates from the other ingredients. Too little or too much salt is the first thing a taster notices in bread. The same 2% of salt can taste plainly salty in one bread and just right in another, often because of the minerals in the water.

How much, and when

Most doughs take about 1.75% to 2.25% salt, by the weight of the flour. Some authorities work it out from the water instead, at about 30 g of salt per liter (1 oz. per qt.). In hot summer weather many bakers add a little more salt than in winter, to guard against the dough fermenting the wrong way.

30.4 Milk in baking

Milk itself, its forms and its sugar, lactose, are covered with dairy. see chapter 14: Dairy and cheese Dairy products are kept in a refrigerator at 2–4°C (36–39°F), in their own covered area, because their fat picks up strong smells.

In the dough

Milk raises the amount of water a dough takes up, so a milk dough should leave the mixer a little softer than one made with water. It can also stand more intensive mixing.

A milk dough has a higher pH than a water dough, which means it is less acidic, and it ferments more slowly. That changes the timing:

• Bench time runs longer, because the dough ferments more slowly at that stage.
• Final proof takes about the same time as usual, because by then the yeast has adjusted.
• The dough copes slightly better with a range of temperatures. Bakers call this fermentation tolerance.

In the oven

A loaf made with milk colors faster, and its crust ends up darker. Do not judge it by crust color alone. Pulled out too soon, it can sink a little and be hard to slice.

In the finished loaf

Compared with bread made with water, bread made with milk has:

• more volume, because the dough holds gas better
• a darker crust, from the lactose
• a longer shelf life, partly thanks to the milk fat
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• a finer, more "cottony" grain, which also makes it slice better

Skim milk and skim milk powder give less of these gains; the longer shelf life, which comes from the fat, is one that weakens. Lactose barely sweetens and yeast cannot ferment it, so a dough made with skim milk powder needs added sugar or it ferments very slowly. Lactose does caramelize easily, which gives a good crust color. The usual amount of skim milk powder is 2% to 8% of the flour weight in yeast doughs, and up to 15% in cakes.

Buttermilk and sour milk go into variety breads. Being lower in pH, they need a shorter fermentation.

30.5 Chemical leaveners: baking powder, soda, ammonium

To leaven a dough or batter is to give it a source of gas that makes it swell when it meets moisture and heat. Yeast is the living leavener. Others are chemical, mechanical or physical, and a baker picks one to suit the product. Yeast belongs with fermentation see chapter 26: Alcohol and gas, and eggs as a leavener with eggs. see chapter 15: What eggs do in a recipe

Baking soda

Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. Wet and heated, it gives off carbon dioxide gas. Wet and heated alongside enough acid, it gives off twice as much.

Some ingredients are slightly acidic and supply part of that acid.

• honey
• molasses
• ginger
• cocoa
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• bran

That is why some recipes use baking powder alone and others use baking powder and soda together. Buttermilk works the same way. see chapter 14: Cultured milk and cream

• Work quickly. Most of the gas comes off early, while the batter is still acidic, at a pH of about 5 to 6. Once the soda has used up the acid, the mix turns alkaline and the gas slows. Get soda batters and doughs into the oven without delay, or much of the gas is gone before baking starts.
• Do not overdo it. Too much soda with too little acid turns a white cake crumb yellowish brown and leaves a strong, unpleasant smell of soda.
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• Soda alone goes into gingerbread and spiced honey cookies, to give them color quickly in the oven while keeping them soft.
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• Soda in chocolate cakes. It is paired with baking powder to keep the pH where it should be, and it gives a better grain and color. When there is enough acid to release all the gas, the chocolate color comes out darker and richer. Devil's food cake owes its reddish, coarse, open crumb to soda being its main leavener.
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• Know your cocoa. Dutch-process cocoa has had some of its acid neutralized already, so less acid is left to react. With it, use more baking powder and less soda.
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How much soda depends on the product and on the rest of the formula. Cookies rich in fat and sugar need little leavening, or none. Typical amounts, as a percentage of the flour weight, are:

These figures look small beside baking powder's, because baking powder is only partly soda; the rest is its acid.

Baking powder

Baking powder is soda with one or more acids already mixed in. Moisture and heat set the acid and soda reacting, and the carbon dioxide they make forms bubbles that raise the product, just as gas from yeast does. It is reliable and of high quality.

The two main kinds differ only in how fast they react:

• Continuous-action (single-action) powder has one acid. It reacts steadily all through baking until its gas is spent.
• Double-action (multiple-action) powder has two acids. One gives off a little gas while the batter is still cool; the other, the main acid, gives off most of the gas at baking heat.
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What happens in the oven. The gas comes off in stages.

• About 15% of the gas comes off before baking, in the cold mix, and some of that is lost, though enough power usually remains.
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• The other 85% comes off in the oven, starting at around 40°C (105°F). The gas moves into the tiny cells that mixing or creaming made in the batter and swells them.
• At about 60°C (140°F) the starch begins to gelatinize and the cell walls start to set.
• By about 75°C (167°F) they are more or less firm. Any gas made after that just escapes through the open crumb. How starch sets with heat is explained with heat. see chapter 7: Starch gelatinization

Using it. Sift baking powder with the flour or other dry ingredients so it spreads evenly. For most cakes, about 5% of the flour weight works best. Weigh it carefully: a little too much can make the product collapse. Yeast is more forgiving, since too much of it usually just makes the dough rise faster. Weighing is covered with measuring. see chapter 5: Measuring by weight and by volume

Ammonium bicarbonate

Ammonium bicarbonate is a white powder made of crystals. Bakers use it in flat, spiced cookies such as gingerbread, and in éclair paste.

• Dissolve it in the cold liquid of the batter.
• At room temperature it barely breaks down. Near 60°C (140°F) it breaks down noticeably, and at oven heat it breaks down very fast.
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• Use it only in products that are low in moisture and not dense. Then no taste or smell of ammonia stays behind.
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30.6 Steam as a leavener: cream puffs and popovers

Cream puffs and popovers rise on steam, with no yeast or chemical leavener at all. Both are made with little gluten development. The recipes below are small batches, meant for practicing the method.

Cream puffs

The paste for cream puffs holds 2 tbsp. butter, ¼ cup water, ¼ cup sifted flour and 1 beaten egg, for 5 medium puffs. Making them shows how much a cream puff's success depends on the emulsion in its paste.

• Heat the oven to 425°F.
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• Bring the butter and water just to a boil, then take the pan off the heat and tip in all the flour at once.
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• Stir fast until the paste pulls away from the pan and gathers into a ball around the spoon.
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• Let it cool a little. Beat in the egg in two parts, beating well each time.
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• Drop tablespoons of paste onto an ungreased baking sheet. Do not add paste to puffs already on the pan.
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• Bake 20 minutes at 425°F, then 10 minutes at 325°F. Turn the oven off, pierce each puff in the side with a sharp knife, and leave them in the oven 10 minutes more.
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• Cool, then fill.

Fill them with a vanilla pudding.

• Mix ¼ cup sugar, 1½ tbsp. cornstarch and ⅛ tsp. salt, and stir in 1 cup milk gradually.
• Cook and stir over medium heat until thick, then 1 minute more on lower heat.
• Off the heat, stir in 1½ tsp. butter and ½ tsp. vanilla extract.
• Let it cool.

Popovers

Popovers are a pour batter: ½ cup milk, 1 egg, ½ cup sifted flour and a little salt, for 4 medium popovers.

• Heat the oven to 425°F and get the popover pan ready. A cast-iron pan is greased and then preheated; a coated steel pan is greased but not preheated.
• Beat the ingredients with a rotary beater until smooth, and pour into the cups.
• Bake 20 minutes at 425°F, then 15 minutes at 325°F. Turn off the oven, make a slit in each popover with a sharp knife, and leave them for 10 minutes.
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• Serve warm, with butter and jam.

What a good one looks like

• What gives each its structure?
• How much liquid does each have for its flour?
• Why do the puffs carry more egg?
• Why must the flour be cooked in the boiling water for cream puffs but not for popovers?
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30.7 Water hardness and pH

Ordinary city tap water is usually fine for dough. Most supplies carry chlorine to keep the water pure, and some add fluoride against tooth decay, but there is too little of either to affect a dough. Cities also treat their water to cut strong acidity, because acid water would eat away the pipes, so a baker on city water rarely has to worry about water that is too acidic.

Two kinds of water can cause trouble:

• Soft water can make dough sticky. Add some yeast food, or use less water in the dough.
• Alkaline water tightens dough and slows fermentation. The enzymes in a dough work best when it is slightly acidic.

If you suspect your water, send a sample to a laboratory for a full analysis.

What hard water does to boiling sugar is covered with heat. see chapter 7: Sugar

30.8 Flavorings: extracts, zest, spice

Flavorings are not a basic ingredient of baked goods the way flour is, but they make the difference in a really good one. Bakers have four main kinds.

• extracts, also called essences
• emulsions
• aromas
• spices

Salt counts as a flavoring too, because it makes other flavors stronger, and chocolate is another.

Extracts and essences

Extracts, essences, emulsions and aromas are all flavor carried in a liquid, very often ethyl alcohol.

The flavor in an extract or essence is an essential oil drawn from a fruit, herb or vegetable, or an imitation of one. Fruit flavors often come from a particular part of the fruit: the rind (zest) of lemons and oranges, for example, or the outer flesh of apricots and peaches. Some have artificial flavor added to boost the taste, or artificial color for looks; food regulators limit these additives. Flavors may be sealed inside corn syrup and emulsifiers, or coated in gum, which protects them and helps the product keep longer. Many popular essences mix natural and artificial sources and still taste true.

Aromas

Aromas carry their flavor in oil rather than alcohol. They cost much more than alcohol extracts, but their scent is purer and finer. Use them in delicate creams, sauces and ice creams.

Emulsions

A flavor emulsion is aromatic oil and water blended smooth and held together with a stabilizer, such as a vegetable gum. Emulsions are stronger than extracts and lose less flavor in the oven, so a smaller amount does the job.

Zest and spice

Rubbing citrus zest with sugar to draw out its oil is covered with fruit. see chapter 18: Citrus

Vanilla, cinnamon sugar and the other baking spices, and how to keep them, are covered with herbs and spices. see chapter 20: Handling spices well