When it comes to baking anything, sugar is an essential ingredient that you need. Without sugar, probably no baked goods can be prepared in the kitchen. If you think it’s impossible to bake anything without sugar, we can reassure you that it’s not the case.
Without adding sugar, there are some alternative ways to add sweetness to your recipe. So, if you’re clueless about how to bake without sugar, you’ve come to the correct place! We’ve categorized some useful ways to bake without using sugar and still enjoy baked goods with absolute delicacy.
Why Sugar Is Used for Baking
Baking requires sugar for a lot of different purposes. If you want to bake without sugar, you need to identify why each baking recipe involves sugar. Determining the role of sugar in each recipe, you can conclude what to replace sugar within the recipe.
Here are some reasons for which sugar is added to baking recipes-
Sweetening
The traditional use of sugar has to be sweetening a recipe. Aside from baking, any recipe that you want to make sweet includes the use of sugar. This is probably the most crucial reason why you need sugar for your recipes.
So, if you need sugar to add sweetness to your recipe and you want to replace it, then you need to look for additional ingredients that might do the trick.
Raising Agent
Sugar can act as a raising agent in baking due to its grainy nature. Baked goods can rise during baking when an inflating agent like sugar is used to blend with butter or cream. Sugar causes the air to be trapped during the mixture, and baking will result in inflation.
So, if you need sugar for acting as a raising agent, you should replace it with something similar that will carry out the same task.
Browning
Sugar is used in many baked goods for caramelization. Heating sugar results in caramelization, which brings a golden deep brown color to the recipe.
A higher amount of sugar gives a deeper brown color. So, if you need sugar in your recipe solely for browning, look for alternatives that will provide similar brown or caramel color.
Moisture Retention
Sugar can absorb water and hold on to it, ultimately retaining the moisture. This moisture-retaining property will allow items like slices of bread, soft rolls to remain soft for many days after preparing. Things baked without sugar appear crunchy and hard, whereas those made with sugar appear fluffy and soft.
If you want to eliminate sugar but still attain the soft consistency, choose the products that will deliver the same effect.
Decoration
The perfect use of sugar is to decorate cookies, cakes, and pastries. Icing sugar, which is a kind of powdered sugar, is widely used for creating a thick consistency for icing cakes, cookies, and other baking goods.
If you need sugar in your recipe for this purpose, then look for other ingredients that will allow you to create a thick icing similar to sugar.
Why Is Sugar Avoided in Baking?
Sugar is an essential ingredient for baking but can be a source of many issues for some people. Here are some reasons why sugar is avoided in baking-
- Most people prefer low-calorie options as their food ingredients. Since sugar contains a lot of calories, it is avoided by many people during baking.
- People with diabetes tend to avoid sugar in baking for their balanced sugar levels.
- Processed sugar can be responsible for a lot of harm to the body and is thus avoided in baking by people who prefer natural ingredients.
How to Bake without Sugar: Alternatives to Sugar
You might look for sugar alternatives because you want to avoid processed ingredients or because you want something low calorie.
Whatever the reason, there are always alternatives to sugar. You can entirely skip sugar yet get a sweet taste, and inflated property, a brown color, a soft surface similar to sugar using these ingredients:
Sweetening Agents
To add sweetness to your recipe, you can add honey, agave, or syrup instead of sugar. Honey is the most natural alternative you can find in place of processed sugar. It will also provide a unique flavor to your recipe.
You can also use different syrups to your recipe instead of sugar, like maple syrup, which will give an excellent sweet taste. Maple syrup is also great to add brown color to your recipe and provide the caramelization effect.
Agave is commonly used to sweeten the recipes used for diabetic patients because it does not alter sugar levels in the body. It is, therefore, an excellent alternative for sugar and considered a healthy ingredient.You can use 2/3rd of a cup of the sweetening agent instead of one cup of sugar for the same sweetness you require.
Fruit sauces can also be used instead of sugar to add sweetness to your recipe. One cup of apple sauce, one cup of mashed banana, and one up of blended figs can replace one cup of sugar to the recipe.
But using fruit sauce can also add its flavor to the recipe, so if you don’t think that the taste will adjust with your recipe, you should avoid them.
Decorating Agents
If you want to replace sugar in your recipes for decorative purposes, there are many replacers for powdered and icing sugar. A replacer like this is granulated erythritol. It acts as a good alternative for creating a thick icing for cakes, cookies, and other desserts.
You can also opt for colored sugar replacers or adding a hint of naturally made food color to the erythritol to achieve the same effect.
Either way, you can use erythritol widely for decorative purposes instead of sugar for baking goods.
Browning Agents
If your idea of using sugar is for achieving the caramel brown color, you can try other ways. Using xylitol in the recipes will result in a right brown color similar to caramelization done with sugar.
Using dates, apples, and figs and heating them in the same way as you would, sugar gives a similar effect to the recipe. If you want the caramel to be sweet, you can add the sweetening agents, preferably agave or maple syrup, to achieve a sweet caramel flavor.
Softening
For achieving the soft and fluffy consistency of bread and rolls that are possible with sugar, there are many alternatives.
Date puree can also be used instead of sugar to achieve the dense consistency in bread. When you add date puree, it will result in a far softer texture than sugar.
Raising Agents
There are so many great raising agents for baking goods that can be used in place of sugar. Yeast, baking soda, baking powder are great alternatives to sugar for using a leavening product.
These agents trap the air between butter, cream, or other powdered products, causing an inflation of the food item during baking. If you need a sweet taste along with inflation in the baking recipe, you can easily add the sweetening agents in the recipe.
In this way, you can try out all these different ingredients instead of sugar to achieve the same result.
Conclusion
Summing it up, it is evident that it can be hard to get rid of using sugar completely in baking recipes. But baking without sugar can result in many health benefits for the body. So, if you’re curious about how to bake without sugar, our discussed alternatives will be quite helpful to you.