Hi class, welcome back to baking school!
I am Kristin Baker Bettie Hoffman, the baking instructor over at BakerBettie.com
Now today we are on lesson six of the baking fundamentals course and today
we're diving into the sweet stuff! We're going to talk all about sugar, its
functions in baking, and the different types of sugar that you most commonly
encounter in baking, and the differences between all of them. So let's go ahead
and dive in! So first things first, let's talk about what is sugar? So sugar is
actually a molecule called sucrose that is found in all plants but it's actually
found in the most high quantities in sugar cane and sugar beets. So pretty
much all sugar that you will ever bake with comes from these two plants. And you
might not know this, but if you've ever bought a bag of sugar that was not
specifically marked as "cane sugar" chances are you actually purchased beet
sugar. But cane sugar and beet sugar are actually chemically identical. So now
that you know exactly what sugar is, let's talk about all of the roles it
plays in baking. Now you might be thinking "of course sugar sweetens our
baked goods" but it actually plays huge roles in the structure and the texture
of our baked goods! So let's go through each role it plays in baking. Sugar
sweetens and adds flavor to our baked goods.
So while granulated sugar is actually a pretty neutral flavor and really only
add some sweetness to our baked goods, other sugars like brown sugar not only
add sweetness but do add some depth of flavor to the baked good. Sugar promotes
browning.
Now because of the way sugar caramelizes when it is heated, baked
goods made with sugar will brown more readily than baked goods made without
sugar. To demonstrate this, I actually made four batches of just a very simple
shortbread cookie. The one on the left here is made without any sugar at all
and then there are increasing levels of sugar as you go down the line. So this
last cookie here on the right is made with a very high ratio of sugar and is
much more brown in color than the cookie made on the left. These were all baked at
the same time and temperature so you can really see a huge difference with this.
Sugar holds on to moisture. So sugar actually has hygroscopic properties
which means that it grabs and holds on to moisture. So baked goods made with
sugar actually stale less quickly than baked goods made without any sugar. So I
like to think about this by comparing a baguette, which is made without any sugar
at all, and a cake that was made with a lot of sugar. Now if you were to leave
both of these two things out at room temperature overnight in the morning
that baguette is going to be so stale that you could lightly break a tooth on
it if you try to take a bite now the cake will have also begun stealing but
it is not going to be nearly at the staleness level of the baguette and that
is because of the hygroscopic properties of the sugar in that cake sugar
tenderizes
now because sugar is hygroscopic in nature it is going to suck in a lot of
liquid in the baked good and leave less liquid readily available for flower to
interact with and develop gluten with so it actually slows down gluten production
in baked goods now gluten production is the thing that
makes baked goods very chewy and tough so baked goods up made with sugar
actually tend to be much more tender than baked goods made without sugar
sugar at 11
the sugar plays a huge role in the leavening in our baked goods when you
think about creaming butter and sugar together the thing that really makes
that butter mixture very light and fluffy is the sugar is giving the
stabilization for the web of air that is beaten into the butter and sugar now
additionally because sugar is hygroscopic and is holding onto all of
that moisture it gives a structure for gas expansion in the oven to really rise
and spread our baked goods now you might have noticed when I showed you those
cookies before that the Mon made without sugar did not spread at all it
completely maintained its shape but as you move down the line the SCHIP cookie
with the high ratio of sugar really spread quite a bit compared to the
cookie without sugar now I'll also show you these muffins that I made I made
three different batches of muffins this first one on the left here is made
without any sugar at all the one in the middle is made with a normal amount of
sugar that a muffin recipe calls for and then this last one here is actually made
with double the amount of sugar now you can see really how much leavening
happened in this muffin actually too much leavening happened so much so that
it spread outward and instead of completely up this is what it looks like
when too much leavening happens in your baked good sugar stabilizes now when
sugar is beaten into another ingredient such as when making meringue with egg
whites or making whipped cream with heavy cream it begins dissolving into
that substance and gets trapped into little air pockets that are being beaten
into the ingredient it essentially serves as this little cushion between
all of the air bubbles which really helps stabilize the air that has been
beaten in and lastly sugar garnishes
so we love to use sugar to garnish our baked goods whether it's sprinkling
powdered sugar to finish the top of a pastry or sprinkling sanding sugar to
add some crunch or even caramelizing sugar to make some kind of fancy sugar
decoration sugar can be used in all kinds of ways to garnish our baked goods
so let's talk about the most common sugars that you will use in baking
granulated sugar is a refined sugar that is white in color and is the most common
type of sugar used in baking when raw sugar is refined the naturally occurring
molasses is removed and a white sugar with fine crystals is produced brown
sugar is granulated sugar that has molasses added back into it producing a
fine crystal sugar that is moist and has more depth of flavor light brown sugar
has a small amount of molasses while dark brown sugar has a larger amount of
molasses molasses is even more hygroscopic in nature than plain
granulated sugar so brown sugar keeps baked goods moist and adds chewiness
powdered sugar which is also called confectioner sugar icing sugar or 10x
sugar is a very finely ground white sugar because powdered sugar is so
finely ground it is also combined with a starch like corn starch to prevent it
from clumping powdered sugar dissolves extremely quickly and because of its
fine texture and the addition of corn starch it can create a very tender baked
good so now I feel like we should address the topic of substituting sugars
in baking so now that you do have a good understanding of how important sugar is
in the structure and the texture of your baked goods I want to encourage you to
substitute sugars with caution because you are going to get varied results but
one of the exciting things about understanding how
truly does work in baking it gives you the opportunity to really experiment and
try different things if you are interested in trying to create your own
recipes one of the things I should note is that if you are going to try to
substitute sugar in baking you really want to do it by weight instead of by
volume because all of these different types of sugars do have a different
amount of weight by volume so you're going to be the most accurate if you do
substitute by weight so that is it for today's lesson I hope you learned
something about how important sugar is in baking not just for sweetness but for
the structure and texture of your baked goods and now I want to give you your
homework assignment so I'm actually going to give you two options for
homework for this assignment the first option is that I would love for you to
try your hand at making an angel food cake now the reason I chose this
particular baked good is because it has very few ingredients in it and sugar is
one of the main ingredients in it and sugar plays a huge role in angel food
cake for the way the baked good is leavened and how moist and tender it
becomes angel food cake has zero fat in it and zero chemical leavening so the
sugar and the egg whites are actually going to do all of the leavening and
then the sugar is really what's going to keep that cake tender and moist so it's
such an excellent example of how important sugar is in baking now if
you're not really interested in making an angel food cake then I'd encourage
you to try baking something anything that calls for you to cream butter and
sugar together now when you cream butter and sugar
together you want to make sure that your butter is at room temperature and then
you're going to cream it together until it is truly very light and fluffy and
very pale in color pay attention during this process watch how much this mixture
changes and be mindful about how much of that is the sugar
the work now you can share your homework assignment by commenting on this video
letting me know what you made or you can share a picture of it in our private
Facebook group our on any of your social media using the hashtag BB baking school
thanks guys I'll see you next time bye