March 28, 2010 - 6:51am
Question about Sweet Dough
Hi everyone. I'm making a sweet bread that has a lot of sugar (about 20%) , a lot of milk, and a lot of egg yolks. When making sweet doughs with this much sugar, should the sugar be added to the flour before the liquids? Or should the sugar be dissolved in the liquids? Also, when is the best time to add the egg yolks? I usually just dump everything in all at once (but partially dissolve the sugar in the milk first) . Still produces great bread, but maybe there's a better sequence to adding ingredients. Also, I'm wondering if some sort of autolyse could be useful. Any comments would be much appreciated.
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Hi Uberathlete,
An excellent question. You should always dissolve the sugar in the liquid when making any flour-based dough/paste/batter to my mind, if at all possible.
I usually make a ferment with many of my sweet dough recipes, so it is difficult to dissolve all the sugar first, as the sugar levels are too high for the yeasts to feel comfortable about. However....
This is why:
Both the sugar and the flour will compete for available water in any given mix. The sugar will always win, of course, given it's hygroscopic nature.
So if you dissolve the sugar, then it can take up all the water it needs first. This means all the spare liquid is then available to the protein and starch [and bran, if using] fractions of the flour. It may be a neat trick to allow you to get just that little extra liquid into your dough.
Best wishes
Andy
Great explanation. Sugar is always considered a "liquid" ingredient so it's mixed with the other liquids before being incorporated in the total mix.
If the sugar percentage (or butter) is over 10% or so I actually mix these into my doughs in stages after I develop the gluten. I started doing this after reading about it in Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America, concerning her kugelhofp recipe. I've found that this gives better lift in the final product.