Sugar is an important and indispensable ingredient when making baked goods. So, what are the functions of sugar in production? Why is the flavor quality of sugar-free baked goods unpopular? Where should we start to improve?

In a nutshell, in the production of baked goods, in addition to increasing the sweetness of the product, sugar also has an important impact on the quality standards such as the aroma, color, taste, shape, texture, and shelf life of the product.

For bakery food manufacturers, when designing recipes, the function of sugar or sweeteners must be considered, and the physicochemical properties of sugars and sweeteners must be well known.

Physicochemical Effects of Sugar

Sugars used in production usually include sucrose, caramel, glucose syrup, honey, etc. The main factors such as sweetness, flavor, and price of the selected sugar should be considered. The sweetness is generally measured by relative sweetness, and the sweetness of sucrose is generally defined as 100 as a standard. The sweetness of lactose is 32, the sweetness of glucose is 70, the sweetness of fructose is 170, and the sweetness of inverted sugar is 130. The sweetness of sweeteners is usually also based on sucrose, expressed in multiples relative to the sweetness of sucrose.

Besides considering the sweetness, on the other hand, the flavor of the sugar should be considered. Different sugars have different sweetness and flavors. Sucrose is most easily accepted by most people because of its pleasant flavor. Thus, whether a sweetener can be accepted mainly depends on whether its flavor is close to that of sucrose. If it is very like sucrose, there is room for development. For example, aspartame is widely used in food because its flavor is very like sucrose.

Sugar can not only increase the sweetness of the product, but also improve its color, aroma, and taste. Baked products are subjected to high temperatures during the baking process, and a small part of the sugar will be caramelized into caramel, making the product an attractive golden yellow. At the same time, it also produces the unique caramel flavor of baked products. Besides, sugar can also undergo a Maillard reaction with amino acids and other substances in ingredients to color the product. The unique appearance, color, and aroma of baked products are inseparable from the function of sugar.

In addition, in fermented baked products, sugar can also provide yeast growth diet and promote fermentation. Add an appropriate amount of sugar to bread dough or soda cookie dough. In the early stage of fermentation, due to the hydrolysis of macromolecular starch, it takes a certain time. At this time, the yeast mainly uses the sugar added in the ingredients for nutrition to grow and reproduce, so as to speed up the fermentation speed and make the product The internal pores are full and the quality is good.

For the processing of bakery products, the more important point is that sugar can adjust the swelling degree of gluten in the dough, thereby improving the texture of the finished product. Sugar has strong water absorption. In the process of dough preparation, sugar absorbs a certain amount of water and forms a certain osmotic pressure, which will affect the water absorption and swelling degree of the gluten protein, thereby limiting the formation of gluten. Then, by changing the amount of sugar, the size of this adjustment effect is also changed, so as to achieve the purpose of changing the structure of the finished product. In production, this can be fully utilized according to the needs of the product.

Choice of sweeteners

Due to the amphoteric structure of food sweeteners, they can adsorb on the interface between oil and water after adding to the food system and connect the water and oil to each other by hydrophilic groups and lipophilic groups. The adsorption force of the interface changes, the tension of the interface reduces, and the repulsive force of oil and water is prevented. The raw materials can be stirred and mixed to form a stable emulsion so that the dough structure of the prepared bread is uniform, and the bread produced is delicate.

Adding a certain amount of compound sweetener in the process of bread making can improve the toughness, strength, and mixing endurance of the dough, so that can mix various raw and auxiliary materials evenly to form a homogeneous dough, thereby improving fermentation endurance and proofing endurance. It improves the air-holding property of the dough, ensures the normal production of bread, prevents the collapse of the produced bread, and improves the quality of the bread.