My understanding is that when you put, say, 3 Tbsp of refined table sugar in a bread recipe, the yeast will react with that sugar to produce carbon dioxide to make the bread rise, and alcohol.
Does this mean that there is not any "sugar" (at least from the 3 Tbsp added to the mix) in the finished loaf of bread?
Another way to put my question is: If I am "sugar conscience" and don't want to ingest plain old table sugar, will I be doing so if I put it in my bread? Or will it NOT be sugar anymore after it is baked, and therefore not a concern?
Yeast cells don't need added sugar. There are enzymes in flour that convert starch to sugar and the yeast utilize that. I'm sure that the yeast probably also metabolize some of the added sugar, but you can't count on all of it being utilized. If you are concerned about sugar, don't add any. Sugar is added for flavor, to increase browning, and as a tenderizer (because sugar blocks gluten formation). You can make great bread without adding sugar.
Starch is polymerized sugar - better stay away from baked goods in their entirety.
Honestly i don't know how you people work out the concept that refined sugar is somehow worse for you than, oh, lets say turbinado. Or straight up cane juice. There's probably some vitamin content in beet juice, but some people are sensitive to it, especially small children.
While you're at it can somebody explain their objection to high-fructose corn syrup without using any dieting buzzwords? I'm all ears.
If you add sugar it still enzymatically reduced to simple sugars which can be assimilated by the yeast and responsible (for just what you said) for the bread rise and alcohol. As table sugar or sucrose is not digestible unless broken down into its component monosaccharide; glucose and fructose( by invertase) which what the yeast really needs.
Actually there exist in the flour residual amounts of sugar ( not higher than a percent In most cases, ). But that is not enough ,as the yeast needs more ; therefore they have to convert any available free starches to sugars by enzymatic methods( amylase in malt and flour).
Just remember ,A bread can simply be made with just four basic ingredients: Flour, salt, yeast and water. Roy
Most people who are sugar conscious these days are really carb conscious. Sugar is but one carb and assuming you are talking about a bread product (you did add yeast) it is chock full of carbs more so from the flour than the sugar. All carbs convert to glucose in your body and glucose is a form of sugar.
If the problem is simply a desire not to eat table sugar (sucrose) then yes there is still a negligible amount in the product. Sugar acts as a catalyst for yeast but usually does not convert it all in a recipe.
I am not carb conscious and don't have a weight problem, but rather I want to make bread that has as little unnecessary ingredients as is possible without compromising its nutritional value. I don't care about taste. The more bland it tastes, the better, as far as I am concerned personally.
I recently made a loaf of bread with only whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, yeast and water (no salt or sugar or oil) and it turned out very satisfactory as far as taste and texture.
I very much appreciate the responses form all of you! I am just beginning to learn to bake my own bread (new Kenmore bread machine) because I would like to save money for one thing but more importantly I want to eliminate processed foods from my diet. Too many friends and relatives are having heart problems and/or dying now that I have reached my 50's. I don't want to join them just yet ;-)
If you haven't already tried it you might consider experimenting with other flours. It wouldn't fit your request for bland foods but they do fit the bill for heart healthy. I like to use whole wheat flour sometimes and when using white flour I like to add things such as wheat berries, oats, bulgar, spelt, quinoa, rye (not my personal favorite),etc. They increase your fiber content and add nutrients your won't get from just white flour.
You are getting a lot of advise, most of it good, but nobody is answering your question. The answer is that, if you add a small amount of sugar (perhaps 1/2 an oz. to the lb. of flour) the yeast will ferment virtually all of it. It can help speed the fermentation process a little (not necessarily a good thing and not necessarily bad.) The yeast will get the job done just fine without any added sugar as others have indicated.
If you put a lot of sugar (more than 1 oz. per lb. of flour) you are likely to get some sweetness in the bread because the yeast won't ferment it all in a normal fermentation period. Halla, Cuban and other breads have this slight sweetness so, obviously, all the sugar has not been converted by the yeast.
If you don't want any sweetness in the bread, then don't use any sugar as others have correctly recommended. I think it's pretty hard to beat a nice, lean, hard crusted Italian bread made just from flour, water, yeast and a little salt for flavor.
There is a valid objection to high-fructose corn syrup - GMOs. A large percentage of the nation's corn crop these days is grown with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), whose genetic code has been artificially manipulated.
Research on potential health consequences of GMO's is spotty at best, and since it's a new technology, there's no research on long term effects, for the incontrovertible reason that these crops haven't been on the market long enough for a study of long-term effects to be made.
More disturbing are the ethical consequences. It would be one thing if genetic modification were being done solely for what one might take to be socially beneficial reasons like increased crop yields or higher nutrient values, but this is not the case. In fact, many of the GMOs currently being raised have been created for things like herbicide/pesticide resistance. It's bad enough that such crops encourage even more widespread use of pesticides with known toxic properties and which definitely cause environmental damage, but in fact typically the pesticides they're created to resist are ones manufactured by the same company selling the seed (most seed companies are owned by companies who manufacturer pesticides and herbicides). Thus the company is actually trying to manufacture a market for its own product.
Again, that in itself is ethically questionable, but in addition such companies are creating GMOs with even more insidious properties. They're designed to die out in one generation, so a farmer can't replant seeds saved from the crop he just made - he's dependent on buying more from a seed supplier. And these GMOs can also require an activator - another chemical, usually manufactured by the same company, in order to produce a crop at all. But even that's not the worst of it. Some of them are designed so as to kill off any crops not of that GMO stock grown on the same land. So the farmer is literally made a captive - he has to use the seed from the company, he has to apply the chemical from the company, he can't back out and revert to non-GMO production.
It's also impossible to contain GMOs, in the sense that a farmer adjacent to the one growing GMOs can't prevent some seed from blowing over or spilling over or in some other way migrating into the next field, contaminating his crops in unpredictable ways. And, like the StarLink corn episode a few years back, trying to control where GMO's end up in the marketplace is fraught with difficulties. The government doesn't require any sort of labelling for GMO crops, so the customer can't make an informed decision even if they want to. It's for this reason that some people stay away from corn syrup in any form - you can't know whether it contains GMOs, and either you're unwilling to subject yourself to unknown health consequences or you don't want to be a part of supporting very questionable business practices.
You're talking about Starlink, and I know a thing or three about Starlink Corn.
True, the FDA has confirmed that Starlink corn is being used to manufacture corn syrup, and furthermore that there is no technology available to prevent the further spread of the Starlink genes.
However, you're talking out your ass, because you know not of what you speak.
Starlink corn is corn that has been genetically manipulated to create it's own supply of a pesticide known as Cry9c. This means that there is pesticide *in the corn, which sounds pretty alarming, at first.
Let me break it down for you.
1: We didn't invent Cry9c. Cry9c is a protein that is generated by a natural soil bacterium found basically everywhere that there is dirt.
2: Cry9c is not toxic. You heard me, non-toxic. The pesticide action of Cry9c is very specific - it binds to the interior of the digestive tract of caterpillars, which starves them by preventing them from ingesting nutrients from what they eat. Caterpillar physiology is very different from mammalian physiology, our digestive tracts lack the structures that Cry9c binds to.
3: Cry9c is not a new contaminant in our food supply. Cry9c and similar proteins derived from the same bacterium have been widely used as a pesticide for more than 20 years. You've been eating food dusted with the stuff for decades.
4: There is no Cry9c in corn syrup. None. At all. Ever. The FDA confirms that there is no Cry9c found in corn syrup even when made exclusively from Starlink corn. Why?
a. Cry9c breaks down in the presence of water
b. Cry9c breaks down in the presence of heat
c. Cry9c breaks down in the presence of light
d. All three of the above are required to produce corn syrup.
e. Indeed, were you for some reason interested in eating fresh dent corn
- something you have never done and will likely never do because it doesn't taste very good and has an odd texture - by the time it got to the grocery store, nearly all of the Cry9c in a freshly harvested ear of corn has already broken down purely due to the presence of water in the kernels. The starlink nacho debacle notwithstanding, because tortillas are not HFCS.
5: There have been no reported cases of human sensitivity to Cry9c and similar proteins. Ever. Even during FDA studies designed specifically to ferret them out. Even when they had a group of people eat nothing but starlink corn for several weeks.
You are at no risk from starlink corn, least of all from corn syrup, you ignorant ninny.
If you want to complain about the affect it has on much needed insect populations, I'm right there with you, but don't come crying to me about the monarch butterfly - why is it we need a cute mascot to believe in something?
I wholeheartedly agree that that herbicide and pesticide -resistant crops are six kinds of bad idea, but this doesn't directly affect the wholesomeness of HFCS.
The rest of this is so self-contradictory i don't really want to respond to it but i guess i will.
You're concerned about the uncontrollable spread of GMO crops, yet you vilify Monsanto when they render them sterile so that they can't spread? Pick a cause and stick with it.
I'm editing my challenge - can anyone explain to me what makes high fructose corn syrup objectionable, without dieting buzzwords or fear mongering?
HFCS technically is not objectionable to use.In fact its widely used in the baking industry where liquid sugars are applied. I think only people who had never used it , do not know much about it and therefore never understood what it is, have lots to complain against high fructose corn syrup.
I google for this stuff and start reading about "genetically modified enzymes" and other assertions so laughably surreal as to be, admittedly, entertaining.
You ask someone what their objection is, and they start using meaningless buzzwords like "empty calories". There's no such thing as an empty or full calorie. Calories just are. That's good, because you need them to live. We just live in this absurd society where we've solved that problem far too well, so we have to make up a term like 'empty calories' to describe the act of eating high-calorie food that lacks things like fiber and vitamins that also really are preferable to consume.
So it's a stupid argument based on a meaningless buzzword. It doesn't matter where the sugar in something comes from or what form it takes if it has too much sugar in it.
Politically, we have an influential corn lobby, and maybe it wouldn't be cheaper than sucrose from cane or beets if it weren't for all the subsidies and protectionist trade regulation.
The other side of that coin is the situation in europe, where the sugar producers have a powerful lobby keeping corn syrup off the shelves using any means imaginable.
I mentioned Starlink, but only as a side comment. That wasn't the central thrust at all of what I was talking about. There are many different GMO strains of corn, many of which could potentially be in corn syrup, none of which are labelled. The comments I made about GMO's apply to various GMO's, and since there's no way for the consumer to be able to tell what GMO's he may or may not be getting in corn syrup, there's no way he can be selective in what he buys. Thats the reason people are wary about corn syrup.
That's another risk associated with GMO's that I didn't mention - destroying possibly important insect populations. I'd be most concerned about GMO's that destroyed insects indiscriminately. If it's targeted against specific, known pests, and can be localised to the area where the crops are grown, that in itself might not pose any problems. However, if a GMO is capable of killing off a broad spectrum of different insects, this is potentially a disaster because natural ecosystems often depend on insects and if a given population were to collapse, it could end up threatening the entire ecosystem, or at least large segments of it, because of chain-reaction effects. Certainly if a GMO were killing off monarch butterfly populations en masse, there could be repercussions in ecosystems. However, I've seen no articles indicating either that GMOs do or decisively don't kill monarch butterfly populations en masse.
No, but the point is, if there's no way to know whether a given item containing HFCS might have had such GMO's in there, you can be put in the position of unwillingly supporting, through your purchases, crops and business practices you don't endorse. Ultimately most major companies respond minimally if at all to social activism in the form of verbal protest or crop destruction or anything else direct like that, but they will respond to demand. By not buying products that incorporate practices you don't support, you reduce demand for the product and hence apply influence that actually *can* encourage companies to stop practices you don't support.
These are 2 separate concerns. Some GMO's can spread, while others are sterile and thus create dependence on new seed for the farmer. Neither of these outcomes is desirable. Again, since there's no labelling, you can't be selective for either one. It would be virtually impossible for there to be a GMO combining both properties, but since both properties are undesirable, this creates 2 groups of GMO's, both of which would be nice to be able to avoid.
It's not a case of paranoia, either. I recognise that, by and large, most of the risks associated with GMOs are small at most, and the ones that are cause for concern represent the extremes - the worst abuses of the science. However, again, since there is no explicit labelling that lets the consumer determine for himself what choices to make with respect to GMOs, he is in the position of having to avoid all foods that might possibly contain them in order to be able to make any sort of impact at all.
If your concerns aren't as strong or you don't think any action you take can have much impact or you think that the amount of effort required is too great relative to the gain, that's your choice. But there are other individuals whose concerns are sufficiently strong as to make them wish to avoid corn syrup. These are the people for whom corn syrup can be objectionable.
Now, if your question was *really* - "can anyone convince me that *I* should find corn syrup objectionable" - (the "I" referring to you, the one posing the question) that's a different matter altogether and I think you should come to your own conclusions and make your own decisions. Out of curiosity, are there any classes of arguments you think would be valid ones to disdain corn syrup?
It seems to me there are 4 basic positions you can take if at the outset you believed these practices to be unethical.
You can utterly capitulate and decide that in a world where, after all, ethics are relative these aren't ethical questions that are that serious and simply not worry about them.
You can adopt a defeatist attitude that, in spite of your ethical misgivings, no action on your part will change anything anyway so there's no point in even trying although you still remain annoyed.
You can decide that the ethics of the situation are so poor that they must be fought at whatever cost in terms of personal sacrifice, accepting diminished food choices in order to keep your principles.
You can choose to believe that real change is possible and that if you want to see any change you have to do something about it, or at least that if you're not part of the solution, you're contributing at least passively to the problem.
I recognise that I'm simplifying the views you could take but hopefully I've covered the broadest categories. Personally, I must admit that I don't think that the first 3 viewpoints are especially constructive, although they're perfectly valid. No doubt each position involves expending more energy than the previous one. But I also think that it's in not being prepared to invest some energy at the outset that we end up being put in difficult ethical positions - because those people with questionable ethics are going to try to get away with it by taking advantage of those who would rather not spend any energy to contain them.
Apparently this is the case. Some GMO's have apparently been created so as to kill off non-GMO crops grown on the same land. Again, this is probably the very worst abuse of the technology, and probably not all that common, but again, there's just no way to tell what GMO's might have been used, as long as there's no labelling.
Are you saying that you were posing some sort of quiz? That there's an answer you're already aware of but you're trying to see if anyone else can guess what it is? If so, would it not be better and more helpful and informative to give us the benefit of your knowledge by posting the answer that you know?
If not, and you're saying you're looking for a real answer but don't know what it is, I submit to you that you've already decided in your heart that you want to give up corn syrup. If this is the case, then you should not waste time and simply give up corn syrup now. It's not necessary for you to be able to rationalise your decision by being able to supply an incontrovertible logical justification to anyone who would challenge your decision. Ultimately virtually all decisions are based on your own internal axioms, which are by nature unprovable: being axiomatic they're the very things you have to accept as a given.
I figure my best shot is quiet subversion. But now that I've let that cat out of the bag it's not really subversion anymore.
I'm sorry, I guess I've been a bit of a jerk. I'm offended by arguments that appeal to fear and doubt or other emotional considerations rather than logic and science.
It turns out that if you happen to be male (around half of us are), and you have a copper deficiency (most americans do), and you are already leading a less than healthy lifestyle (ditto), a diet high in fructose - and the average american gets about 9% of their calories from fructose - it seems to increase the lipid (fat) buildup in the liver, and increase your plasma lipids - which is to say there's more fat in your blood stream. And none of that could possibly be good.
It's even worse if you're diabetic.
For some reason the same action wasn't observed in women.
So, there's the reason i was hoping someone would cough up. Didn't want it to come from me, I'm just some crank.
Google for "fructose" and "plasma lipids" and you can see the research for yourself.
If you happen to be living a healthy lifestyle, well, that would mean that you're eating a balanced diet, and wouldn't have to worry about the effect of a high-fructose diet, would you? And in that case, your only legitimate objection to HFCS is probably political or sociological.
Almost certainly not, but taking a devil-may-care attitude has its own risks as well. While really wierd side effects are probably very unlikely, the research into the consequences of GMOs isn't very extensive, in part because of the simple fact that they haven't been around long enough for there to be extensive research. As a result, some people may want to opt to avoid GMO's until research is extensive. But there's no labelling for GMO's and so no way to know if a given product with suspect ingredients might have them. Thus, if you wish to avoid GMO's, the only choice is to avoid the suspect category altogether.
No, in fact quite a few are made specifically to resist herbicides or pesticides, one of the most common being "Roundup-ready" soybeans, which have additional resistance to the herbicide Roundup.
Others are being made to resist the pests as you suggest.
There are actually 3 issues going on here - each applying to different sets of GMO's.
One set requires an activator, making a farmer potentially dependent on the same company supplying the seed to supply the activator.
Another set kills off other plants growing in the same field, making the farmer dependent on the specific seed supply from the specific company.
A third set can cross-contaminate in the wild, affecting adjacent farmers in unpredictable ways without that adjacent farmer's consent.
It's not that all 3 of these properties are necessarily going to be found in one GMO that's at issue. Indeed, it's unlikely that they're found together. The issue is that, since there is no labelling, there's no way to know what GMO's having what undesirable impacts went into a given product. So if you want to take any position to avoid GMO's, you have to avoid them all.
There will always be a group of individuals who are paranoid about the activities of government, Big Business, The Mob, and any other organisation or cabal, real or imagined, that they feel they can't control. I don't think, however, that this represents the mainstream group of people who avoid GMO's.
Many if not most of the people who avoid GMO's primarily object to the way GMO's have been foisted upon American society - introduced very soon after their creation, with little regulation in place regarding their use and no labelling requirements. There is thus little opportunity to choose based on GMO content, except for boycotting all foods that might have GMO's in them altogether.
I find it disappointing that in the GMO debate, so many of the arguments from both sides presented in the public media try to marginalise the other side. This has had the effect of turning the question into a battle of opposing polemics, stifling any thoughtful discussion or analysis of the issues. And this has on the one side meant a curtailment of research and products that might actually have been useful, and on the other side almost zero visibility into the process, with concomitant ability to make rational choices, for the concerned public.
I don't like to see a dismissive attitude toward this topic. There is, of course, much more that you have already discussed. Worries about emergence of pesticide resistant insects and organisms. Diminishing plant gene pool. Farmers dependent upon future contracts with large processing companies and locked into specific seeds to fulfill that contract. Janet
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