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Sugar in Pizza Dough Explained: How It Affects Dough [Why & When to Use It]

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Sugar is often viewed as a controversial ingredient in pizza dough, but this perception is misguided. In this article, we’ll discuss the role and effects of sugar in dough, why it’s used, and whether you should or shouldn’t include it in your pizza dough

Sugar in Pizza Dough: Introduction

In this article, ‘sugar’ refers to sugar added to the dough, such as table sugar. However, it’s important to understand that most of the sugar in the dough is ‘natural,’ resulting from the breakdown of starch in the flour. This process, driven by amylase enzymes, converts starch into glucose and maltose – simple sugars that yeast can consume.

Sugar has two primary functional effects on dough: it serves as food for the yeast and aids in browning during baking. Additionally, adding sugar to the dough can impact the texture, flavor, and yeast activity, depending on the quantity used.

Common sugars added to dough include table sugar (sucrose), honey (mostly glucose and fructose), milk sugar (lactose), fruit sugar (fructose), and malt (maltose).

Less common sugars/sweeteners include agave syrup/nectar/sugar (around 60% fructose and 20% glucose), molasses (around 50% sucrose, 20% glucose, and 15% fructose), maple syrup (around 60% sucrose and 5% each of glucose and fructose), and brown sugar (around 90% sucrose and 5% molasses).
*These sugars contain varying amounts of moisture (water) and other components, so the sugar content does not account for 100%.

Different sugars vary in sweetness as perceived by our taste buds. For example, sucrose (table sugar) is five times sweeter than lactose (milk sugar), while fructose (fruit sugar) is 1.4 times sweeter than sucrose.

Understanding the Effects of Sugar on Dough

Food for Yeast and the Effect of Added Sugar on Yeast Activity

Sugar in dough, particularly glucose, primarily serves as food for yeast. For optimal fermentation and leavening, the dough typically needs 3-5% sugars (relative to the flour weight). These sugars mainly result from the breakdown of starch into simple sugars by amylase enzymes, though they can also come from externally added sugars like sucrose (table sugar).

Adding up to 5% sugar (relative to flour weight) will increase yeast activity by providing it with more food. However, when sugar exceeds 5%, it will inhibit yeast activity, much like salt, due to osmotic pressure.

To learn more about osmotic pressure and its effect on yeast activity, refer to the following article: Everything You Need to Know About Baker’s Yeast: Types, Characteristics, and Uses in Pizza Dough (section ‘Yeast and Osmotic Pressure’).

Generally, the sugar produced through starch breakdown is sufficient for normal yeast activity and fermentation. This means that adding sugar to the dough isn’t necessary to achieve ideal fermentation.

Lactose, or milk sugar, isn’t consumed by yeast. So, adding milk or milk powder won’t affect yeast activity, though it will increase residual sugar in the dough and affect browning during baking [see next section].

Residual Sugar and Its Effect on Browning

Another important role of sugar in dough is its form as ‘residual sugar’ – the sugar that yeast does not consume and that remains in the dough at the end of fermentation, participating in the browning process during baking.

Residual sugar enables the dough to brown during baking through the Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction between sugars and proteins that occurs at high temperatures, resulting in the browning of the dough (or any food for that matter).

Generally, the higher the level of residual sugar in the dough, the more pronounced the browning during baking.

It’s essential to note that for pizza dough (and other non-sweet baked goods), the main purpose of adding sugar is to enhance browning during baking. In other words, sugar is primarily added to accelerate browning.

There are two ways to increase the amount of residual sugar in the dough (and, consequently, enhance browning):

  1. Directly: By adding sugar to the dough (such as table sugar or honey). Typically, an amount of 1-3% (based on the weight of the flour in baker’s percentages) is sufficient. I recommend starting with 1% and increasing the amount if the browning results are inadequate.
  2. Indirectly: By adding diastatic malt powder (DMP). diastatic malt powder contains active alpha-amylase enzymes that break down starch in the dough into sugars. Adding diastatic malt will result in a ‘natural’ increase of residual sugar in the dough, promoting more browning. Typically, small amounts of diastatic malt (between 0.1-1%) are used, depending on the malt’s strength (the concentration of amylase enzymes it contains) and the flour used.

Effect of Sugar on Texture

Adding sugar to the dough can significantly effect the final texture. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs and ‘traps’ moisture. Depending on its concentration in the dough, adding sugar can create a softer and ‘moister’ crumb.

This effect is particularly evident in sweet pastries that contain high levels of sugar (over 10% in baker’s percentages). At these levels, sugar can ‘delay’ moisture loss during baking. Additionally, sugar ‘competes’ with the gluten-forming proteins for water, ‘interfering’ with gluten bond formation, which results in more extensible and/or less developed gluten, further contributing to a softer texture.

This is one reason why it’s not advisable to significantly reduce the amount of sugar in recipes for cakes and sweet pastries, as the sugar content greatly affects the final texture. For example, reducing sugar in cake recipes can lead to a drier and tougher or chewier texture, while increasing sugar results in a more tender and ‘wetter’ texture.

In contrast, when it comes to pizza dough, which typically contains low amounts of sugar (if any) – the impact of adding sugar on texture is negligible.

Effect of Sugar on Flavor

In terms of flavor, adding sugar to the dough in amounts up to 5% (based on baker’s percentages) will not affect its sweetness. In other words, adding up to 5% sugar to the dough will not sweeten the dough or make it taste ‘sweet’.

This can be attributed to two main reasons. First, yeast consumes most of the sugar in the dough, leaving only residual sugar. Some of this residual sugar participates in the Maillard reaction during baking, contributing to browning but resulting in a relatively low concentration of sugar remaining in the dough.

When table sugar (sucrose) is added to the dough, it quickly breaks down into glucose and fructose (through the action of the enzyme invertase), which the yeast can then consume. In practice, the yeast first consumes the (broken down) added table sugar before consumin other sugars in the dough, as the process of converting starch into sugars is much slower compared to the breakdown of sucrose by invertase.

Second, for us to perceive sweetness, there is a minimum threshold of sugar concentration required. If the concentration falls below this threshold, our taste buds cannot detect sweetness.

Let’s consider a very general example for illustration:

We have 1,000 grams of dough that consists of:

  • 610 grams of flour
  • 366 grams of water (60% in baker’s percentages)
  • 24 grams of table sugar (4% in baker’s percentages, which is 2.4% of the total weight of the dough)

Assuming that during fermentation, the yeast consumes about 80% of the table sugar (19 grams), only 5 grams of table sugar remains in the dough as residual sugar.

In this case, 5 grams out of 1,000 grams of dough translates to a sugar concentration of 0.5% – a level that may be too low to be detected by our taste buds, especially when it exists within the complex flavor profile of the dough (where other flavors can ‘mask’ the sweetness).

Of course, this example is general and meant for illustration purposes. The ‘exact’ effect of sugar levels in the dough on flavor can vary based on several factors: the taster’s sensitivity to sweetness (some individuals have a lower sweet detection threshold than others), fermentation conditions (how much starch was broken down and how much was consumed by the yeast), the type of sugar used (lactose is less sweet than sucrose), and the overall composition of the dough (different flavors can also mask sweetness).

However, a useful rule of thumb is that adding sugar up to 5% typically will not affect the sweetness of the dough.

Sweet Doughs, Osmotic Pressure, and the Amount of Yeast

Another factor to consider when adding sugar to dough is its impact on yeast activity due to osmotic pressure. As mentioned earlier, adding sugar up to 5% will enhance yeast activity, while exceeding this amount will slow it down.

For pizza dough, this effect is generally irrelevant, as it rarely contains more than 5% sugar.

However, it becomes significant for sweet yeast-leavened doughs that contain high sugar levels. In these cases, to compensate for the decreased yeast activity caused by the added sugar, a larger amount of yeast should be used.

When using PizzaBlab’s dough calculator for sweet doughs, a general rule of thumb is to use 1.5 to 2 times more yeast for sugar amounts over 5%. For instance, if the dough contains 10% sugar and the calculator suggests 4 grams of yeast, you should increase that to 8 grams.

Should You Add Sugar to Pizza Dough?

So, we now understand that the primary purpose of adding sugar to pizza dough is to promote browning during baking.

When baking at high temperatures in a wood-fired oven or dedicated pizza oven (350°C/660°F and above), there is generally no need to add sugar to the dough. Too much residual sugar, combined with high baking temperatures, can lead to over-browning or a burnt crust.

This is one reason why Italian flours are well-suited for high-temperature baking. They typically have low enzymatic activity (a relatively low content of alpha-amylase enzymes), allowing for moderate levels of residual sugar. This balance helps prevent excessive browning when baking at high temperatures. However, this characteristic also makes Italian flours less suitable for baking at the lower temperatures of a home oven.

For more information on enzymatic activity in flour and its effect on baking and browning, refer to the following article: The Ultimate Guide to Pizza Flour: Characteristics, Differences, and Choosing the Ideal Flour, specifically the section titled ‘The Impact of Enzymatic Activity in Flour on Browning (Using the Right Flour for Your Baking Temperature)‘.

On the other hand, when baking at lower temperatures in a home oven (up to 300°C/600°F), it is generally beneficial to include sugar to ensure there is a sufficient amount of residual sugar for ideal browning; And adding 1-3% sugar to the dough, definitely helps in achieving this.

The bottom line is that there’s no need to worry about adding sugar to the dough, as it serves specific functional purpose (promoting browning). Standard amounts of sugar in pizza dough, usually between 1-4%, are minimal and don’t need to be overanalyzed, even from a health perspective.

For example, in a dough weighing 600 grams (which makes a huge 45 cm/18″ pizza), 2% sugar in baker’s percentages (8 grams) amounts to about 2 teaspoons of sugar for the ENTIRE pizza. For a standard-sized pizza, this amount decreases to about one teaspoon of sugar.

To put this into perspective, many people add the same or even more sugar to their cup of coffee or tea; Additionally, a single teaspoon of regular ketchup, which most of us consume without a second thought, contains nearly 1.5 grams of sugar.

In this context, there isn’t much difference between adding sugar and honey to the dough. Honey consists of about 82% sugars (mainly glucose and fructose), roughly 17% water, and about 1% vitamins and minerals. In practical terms, consuming 1 gram of honey is equivalent to consuming 0.8 grams of table sugar in terms of sugar content and health impact.

While honey contains trace amounts of beneficial vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, many of these are degraded or inactivated at temperatures above 40–50°C (105-120°F). During baking, where temperatures are much higher, honey loses most of its potential nutritional benefits.

In conclusion, there is no advantage to using honey over table sugar in dough from a health perspective.”

In conclusion, adding sugar to pizza dough shouldn’t be frowned upon; it serves a legitimate purpose and, especially when baking in a home oven, is often essential for achieving the desired browning in the final product.

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