10h ago

Advice needed: Avoiding sweetener in bread recipe

My toddler loves a specific kind of bread. Likely because it’s sweetened. I would like to avoid the sugar. Perhaps if I can make an unsweetened version of his favorite „round bread“? I found a recipe for this kind of bread, but obviously it’s got syrup in it.

I wonder if it’s possible to skip or replace the syrup somehow. I know baking is chemistry, so this might be difficult. I guess I would be okay with adding a small amount of sugar to help the yeast. What else am I missing? I assume the consistency would change if I just skip the syrup?
So I’m looking for advice.

The original recipe:

50g fresh yeast
6dl fingerwarm milk
50g butter, room temperature
0.75dl light syrup
2 tsp salt
9dl wheat flour
6dl rye flour

Crumble the yeast into a bowl and dissolve it with the milk. Add butter, syrup, salt, and flour a little at a time towards the end. Mix everything together into a smooth dough and knead it for a few minutes. Let the dough rise under a kitchen towel for 45 minutes.

Divide the dough into 16 pieces. Form them into round balls and flatten them on a floured baking board. Roll them out into rounds, about 1 cm thin. Roll out the last time with a rolling pin or prick tightly with a fork. Roll quite hard so that there is a deep pattern, otherwise large air bubbles will form in the bread during baking.

Place the rounds on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let them rise under a kitchen towel for about 20 minutes. Set the oven to 250°C.

Bake the rounds in the middle of the oven for 8-9 minutes or until they are golden brown. Let them cool on a wire rack under a kitchen towel.

13 comments

It's kinda on the edge of things.
Sugars in any form are going to change how bread comes out at least a little because the yeast go crazy for it. It shouldn't be a huge difference in rise and crumb, but there's going to be some difference.
A small enough amount, and it won't be detectable at all because it's just getting the yeast going sooner and then the activity settles out. But the syrup here is being added after getting the yeast to get going, so it's going to contribute to the rise, at least during the initial ferment.
So, you can't just replace it with water, even if you calculate how much water is in the syrup.
You should, however, be able to replace it with something else and get roughly the same outcome. I've seen good results with applesauce 1:1. It does up the acidity some, and it slightly softens the end bread compared to sugars only, but it's less of a difference than replacing with water would be, or just using nothing.
You could also try a tangzhong method, which won't necessarily make the crumb come out exactly the same, but it should give a softer texture that will be nicer than using nothing at all
Mind you, you definitely can just skip it. Nothing says you have to worry about it at all. The sugar isn't necessary to make bread. It only changes the exact outcome, and a toddler may not notice the lack of sweetness when it looks the same. A toddler might notice, but it isn't a certain outcome.

Are you just concerned about the corn syrup or the sugar itself?
It looks like you're making a light rye bread. I usually use molasses as the sweetener. You can also use honey as well. It's less sweet than syrup, but still keeps the bread from being too bitter.
You can skip it all together if you choose. And just replace the volume with sink more milk or water. I'm not sure how much .75 dl are, as I've never used that measure before. But trying to look online, I'm getting the feeling it's about a quarter cup? It's not a whole lot of liquid in the grand scheme of things.
Another comment suggested fruit. That's a good idea too. You could use banana or applesauce or fruit juice.
Again, in a rye bread recipe like this, the sweetener is basically trying to cut down the bitterness of the rye, not necessarily turn the bread into cake.

Everyone appears to be telling you to skip it, but they don't understand the question. You'll be cutting moisture and binding agents, you can replace it with an egg but that will add more rise, or by replacing it with a 1:3 ground-flax-seed:water after letting it sit for 5 min.

Try different sweeteners and figure out which one tastes the closest to the syrup. I personally like Splenda
- I’m trying to avoid any kind of sweetener.

You should be fine just leaving out the syrup. There is plenty of food for the yeast in the flour itself. You might want to add a bit more milk or water if the dough comes out a little dry.

My wife uses allulose, stevia, or monkfruit as sugar replacement for baking.

I'm not an expert or qualified in any way, but my guess would be it would be fine without the syrup. Maybe a little bit more butter and milk could make up for the missing syrup in terms of texture. I imagine the sugar in the syrup helps the yeast along more, so maybe to compensate you could let the dough rise for longer?

The best bet would probably be to substitute a portion of the syrup with a sugar-free syrup. Something like 10ml of syrup so that yeast can grow rapidly and 65ml of a sugar free syrup.

One way to replace the syrup would be to use chopped dates or prunes. You can also buy date sugar, which is not real sugar but is made entirely of dates.

Just skip the syrop. You will need to increase the rise times but that should be it.

Is "dl" deciliters? That's neat, never seen that before.
- Yes. I translated a Swedish recipe and didn’t reflect on the measurements. They use dl for everything here (and I‘d very much prefer weight instead on volume for most things… sigh)

13 comments