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.
Edit: Thanks everyone for your input! I think I’ll try to just leave the syrup out entirely and give it more time to rise. I don’t know what the dough should feel like at the different fermentation stages (so I don’t know how to judge when it is ready). So I might actually end up making just the original recipe first, to help me with that. It will be a few days before I have time to try this out. Thanks again!
Try different sweeteners and figure out which one tastes the closest to the syrup. I personally like Splenda
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.
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.
Most are saying to skip the sugar but that sugar isn’t just adding sweetness and moisturizer. It’s feeding the yeast. Cut it and things go wrong fast. You could make your own sugar syrup if the problem is it being corn syrup. But you need to have stuff for the yeast to eat so an undigestible sweetener isn’t going to work. You might try figuring out how much of that sugar the yeast is leaving behind and replace that with some other sugar substitute.
