Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

Tagged: bread making

This topic has 12 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 9 months ago by Jenni.

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

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September 12, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Heather
Participant
I am trying to eliminate sugar in various forms from our diet. Can I use agave nectar in making bread? Honey is more expensive where we are, plus I don’t like the taste of honey so if I buy it I only use it for baked goods anyway. We love agave for anything from yogurt to pancakes, but will it be effective in bread and other baked goods such as muffins, etc?
Thanks!
September 12, 2011 at 2:21 pm
ruth
Participant
I have used agave syrup in baking in the past. It makes for a very cakey texture though. In bread since you are using so little it wont affect the texture. Cakes come out nice and moist. Cookies and brownies though come out a little to cakey, no chewy fudgy brownies. You could probably tweek the whole recipe to get a texture you like, but the results will be cakey if you do a straight swap of the sugar. HTH.
September 12, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Bookworm
Participant
Hmm. I think I wouldn’t worry about the texture so much but about the yeast having something to feed off. Have you made whole-wheat bread with only agave, Ruth? I’ve never used anything but honey, but I LOVE honey and find it fairly inexpensively when I look. Whole Foods usually has good prices–do you have a Whole Foods nearby?
September 12, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Christine Kaiser
Participant
You do not need any sugar to bake bread. Having sugar in the bread is a very American thing;). I am from Europe and we don’t use sugar. Even after living here for 4,5 years I still don’t like the sweet bread (why sweet bread when i want to put meat or cheese on it?) All the recipes I have are in German but if you are interested I can translate them.
Blessings Christine
September 12, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Sharon
Participant
I use Agave Nectar (light) in my bread all the time.
September 12, 2011 at 4:22 pm
crazy4boys
Participant
Christine, I for one, would love the recipes!
I’ve used only agave with wheat bread and it worked fine, texture and taste wise. There is some controversy regarding the actual healthiness of agave, however, and it would be best to research that a bit before using it exclusively. I now use honey for bread (unless Christine can convince me otherwise!). I typically don’t use raw honey for baking since it destroys the enzymes, but I do use raw for anything uncooked. My local grocery store carries it fairly cheaply, but the guy at the farmer’s market sells it at a good price too. I’ve also been known to buy massive 5 pound buckets of it from beekeepers for mega cheap before and put it into quart jars for storage. I’m still using it 4 years later!!
September 12, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Bookworm
Participant
I do make bread varieties without any sugars, but I have to confess that the American thing is less for sweetness in a sandwich bread and more for the texture. It is hard to get a soft sandwich style bread without adding a sugar. I did forget to put any in my sponge once, and while I still got bread and it was still edible, it was not nearly the height I normally get with a half-cup of honey in my four-loaf recipe, and everyone complained loudly. LOL It took me a long time to perfect my soft white-whole-wheat recipe until it was just right and everyone (except my yeast-sensitive) would eat it, and it requires the honey to work! Without it, my bread was much denser and the grain was much drier.
I buy honey in very large quantities also. When local beekeepers have it at a good price I always buy from them, because it may help allergies to use local honey. When colony-collapse affects the local price, I can usually get it for not too much more at Whole Foods–we don’t have one here, but we go to a city to visit family often and buy six month’s or a year’s supply then. I also have several 5gallon buckets downstairs in my storage. We use it for so many things! I’d be lost without it.
Anyway, from the two years I spent messing with bread recipes, I can assert that to get a pillow-soft loaf out of 100% whole wheat, just a few things are necessary—white wheat instead of red, home-ground instead of store bought, a little extra gluten, and honey. I can mess with other ingredients as I need–the water, milk, eggs, even the amount of yeast, but if I play with the flour, gluten, or honey, I lose the texture everyone likes. Then they start begging me for store bought <sigh>
September 12, 2011 at 5:00 pm
MamaSnow
Participant
Christine – I too would love to see your bread recipes if you are willing to translate them out for us – I love European style breads.
I have not used agave, but have started subbing in honey since hubby needs to be off all white sugar. I am not crazy about the flavor of honey on its own, but don’t notice the flavor very strongly when I use it in baking (b/c of the other ingredients). I have found that with yeast bread, subbing honey for sugar works fine because as Bookworm pointed out it’s mostly for the yeast to feed on. Anything else (cakes, cookies, muffins) I’d recommned finding a recipe that uses liquid sweeteners to begin with rather than trying to sub a liquid sweetener for granulated sugar. I’ve freely substituted liquid sweeteners, however, and that usually works fine texture-wise. There’s lots of recipes if you search online, and I recently got a book called the Green Market Baking Book – both the recipes I’ve tried from it so far have been AMAZING. It uses all natural sweeteners. Both the recipes I have actually made so far called for brown rice syrup which I didn’t bother hunting down, but substituted honey instead and they were great.
HTH,
Jen
September 12, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Jenni
Participant
I use applesauce (unsweetened of course) in lots of bread recipes, or cooked, mashed, strained pears. I end up getting a crazy variety of results, because I don’t measure anything. I just throw it all in the bowl. So you probably don’t want to ask me for a recipe! 🙂
September 12, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Heather
Participant
Christine, I would like a good bread recipe with no sugar if you could share…if nothing else, just to try it!
Jenni, do you mean that you use applesauce for loaf/ yeast bread…does it rise well? I like the idea of that!
Bookworm, would you please share one of your most simple loaf bread recipes? I have one that I use and tweak, but it has never turned out consistently and rarely turned out beautifully.
You ladies are great!
September 12, 2011 at 6:34 pm
Bookworm
Participant
Heather, do you have a mixer that will do WW? My very best recipe is tough to hand knead . . .
September 12, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Heather
Participant
Hey Bookworm, I have a hand mixer which I use until I add more flour than it can handle, then I hand knead…so technically I don’t
September 12, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Jenni
Participant
Heather- Yep! I use it in place of the oil/butter for a yeast recipe. But no, it doesn’t rise well and looks awful. But it tastes good! 🙂