How Sugar Affects Pizza Dough: Crust & Fermentation
A sugar by any other name would taste as sweet. Well, sugar has many names and many forms but ultimately is unavoidable in today’s world. I inherited a giant sweet tooth from my father, so I am well versed in the world of sugar, but these days am finding myself needing to keep it to a minimum. The hardest part is not the candy, cakes, cookies or any of the desserts that normally spring to mind when we think sugar. For me, the hardest part is the bread and carbohydrates!
Sugar plays more than one role when it comes to fermentation and flour
But let’s start with what is it? Sugar can be classified into two categories, simple and complex, which can then be broken down further. Sugar is made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen and depending on how they are put together determines the kind of sugar it becomes. Ultimately, flour is comprised of both simple and complex sugars.
Simple sugars consist of fructose which you get from fruits and honey and glucose which is crucial to your brain function and metabolism. Starch is, in essence, chains of glucose molecules stuck together in different ways, making it a complex sugar. Starch is labeled differently than sugar because of how it’s formed but it also does not dissolve in water like fructose does, making it fantastic for making bread and pizza!
Something I learned thanks to Modernist Cuisine is that when starches mix with water and are then heated, they form a clear gel. When we cut into our dough and look at the crumb structure, we see white and cream colors. But under a microscope that structure is actually clear. Because of they overlap, it appears colored.
In dough, yeasts have the biggest sweet tooth of any organism.
They survive and thrive off of sugar. Primarily, yeasts consume simple sugar in which alcohol and carbon dioxide are byproducts which then become trapped within the gluten net which makes dough rise. Since yeast is a living thing and sugar is the main source of food, there needs to be a constant supply, or your dough will not rise or will rise and fall too quickly.
A lot of methods for pizza these days use the aid of refrigeration which slows down the yeast and their desire to consume sugar. This slower process helps develop flavor at a rate that coincides with most production schedules and strength of flour. Too much yeast and your dough will rise rather quickly especially if warm. Remember, yeast loves a warm environment and add too much, and they’ll consume all of the food available before your intended time frame is up.
Yeast naturally reproduces, which is why sourdough can live for a hundred years if constantly fed and maintained. But, slower is better for flavor development.
How do you maintain a constant supply of food?
In flour, there is an enzyme breakdown that turns some complex sugars into simple sugars which can be consumed by yeast. This breakdown happens naturally and is one of the reasons you do not need to always add sugar into your dough.
Some flours also have sugar added to them so be careful that you are not adding too much sugar if you choose to do so as too much sugar can affect the bake.
For longer fermentation some pizzaioli choose to add sugar into their dough. Any simple sugar will do but remember not all sugar is created equal. The concentration or intensity of sweetness varies from type to type so if you start with one it may not always be a 50/50 swap if opting for a different sugar.
Added sugar in dough is not just to make sure yeast has something to eat, but also aids in the browning of dough when it is cooking. Have you ever noticed that older dough has a hard time browning? Usually, you notice it at the worst of times.
Nowadays the hot topics are how high of hydration can you push your dough but also the age.
We’ve all heard about 5+ day doughs and how it always elicits an ooh and an ah but older dough while flavorful can be extremely hard to handle by new hands and hard to cook because there’s not much sugar left. In essence, the yeast has consumed everything.
When you think about the color of your dough and the connection to sugar it is not as simple as how you caramelize the top of a crème brulee by torching and burning sugar. When dough cooks and caramelizes in color this is primarily due to the Maillard reaction which encompasses not just sugar but a reaction between acids, proteins, sugar and peptides.
Another cool thing sugar does is that it attracts and likes to hold onto water which helps keep your interior crumb tender. The natural sugar present in flour is enough so not all pizza doughs, like Neapolitan, need it.
The more you dive into sugar the more you realize it’s a part of all foods. Today’s culture likes to demonize sugar on account of health and wellness fads but without sugar we would not have fermentation. Without sugar we would not have pizza and the many delectable carbohydrate-based products we know and love.
Understanding the role sugar plays in all its forms will help you understand how to coax not just ample flavor but also different colors out of your dough and flour. Let the biggest sweet tooth win!
Laura Meyer is the owner of Pizzeria da Laura in Berkeley, California.
>> Explore answers to more common pizza dough questions in Troubleshooting your Pizza Dough: What’s wrong with my pizza dough? <<
