Baking&Snack - August 2013 - 55

FORMULATION
Natural Sweeteners

Honey and malt are ‘naturals’
for sweetening baked foods.
It’s time to take a new look at
their virtues and …

by Laurie Gorton
Yes, it’s fun to formulate with the new and novel, but
sometimes, it’s the old and traditional that does the best
job. Besides, that old-fashioned approach is right “on
trend” today, the trend favoring natural ingredients. Two
of mankind’s oldest sweeteners — honey and malt —
qualify as natural, and what’s more, consumers see them
that way as well.
“Today’s consumer is more aware than ever before about
the ingredients in the foods they eat,” said Catherine Barry,
director of marketing, National Honey Board, Firestone,
CO. “Honey plays an important role in sweetening bakery
foods, giving bakers the opportunity to sweeten their products with an ingredient with exceptional familiarity and
trust with consumers. This is very important to a growing
segment of consumers who intensely read labels and crave
more natural and clean products.”
The choice of honey for foods formulated to be allnatural takes full advantage of the fact that it is familiar to consumers and does not carry negative perceptions. And it helps maintain a clean label.
Malt may be slightly less familiar to consumers, but
bakers are well aware of its value in creating foods perceived as healthy. “Manufacturers targeting the healthand-wellness platform are using malt to help achieve a
clean label in a number of ways,” observed Judie Giebel,
technical services representative and AIB Certified
Baker, Briess Malt & Ingredients, Chilton, WI. “Malt
is all-natural, non-GMO, healthy and nutritious. In
addition to the label claims it delivers, it can help remove high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from a label.”
Long a staple of specialty health-foods stores, honey in a
variety of forms as well as malt offered as extracts and syr-

ups now get greater shelf space, even separate displays, in
traditional grocery chains. Such improved visibility at retail
is “a response to heightened consumer interest in this area,”
according to Jon Bodner, technical director, Sweetener
Supply Corp., Brookfield, IL. Food product developers
have increased their efforts to use such alternative nutritive
sweeteners during the past few years, and he predicted this
approach will likely continue into the future.
As bakery formulators re-evaluate their sweetener
options, the natural choices have become very attractive, according to Jim Morano, PhD, principal scientist,
Suzanne’s Specialties, New Brunswick, NJ. “The general
trend is to move from refined to natural,” he said. “And
this is driven by consumers who are attracted to natural,
nutritional ingredients.”
And there’s another reason the market favors sweeteners with an uncomplicated reputation. “The simple cooking trend will accelerate,” Ms. Giebel noted.
“Foodies want old-fashioned baked goods but don’t
always have the time to do it. Bringing back grandma’s
recipes with a new flair, I believe, will be the next trend.”

Malt and honey effectively
improve the dough — and
sweetens the finished product
— for whole grain baked foods.
Shutterstock

In its genes
Like grandma, bakers have used honey and malt — both
malted barley flour and malted barley extract — for a
long time. For centuries, Ms. Giebel observed. “These
days, as consumers seek new food experiences, bakers
are discovering malt’s other contributions to both yeastraised and chemically leavened baked goods. Malt is
beneficial to both types because it comes in two forms,
diastatic and nondiastatic,” she said.
Diastatic malt carries the amylase and protease en-

August 2013 / Baking & Snack / 55

Baking&Snack - August 2013

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