Baking & Snack - March 2015 - 54

SUGAR SPARING

the sweetness of a product. "You can take a less-sweet
ingredient such as corn syrup or maltodextrin, and
with the addition of a compatible flavor, maintain the
sweetness the consumer expects from the product,"
said Allan Buck, director, R&D, ADM.

Functional and flavorful
Sugar provides more than just a sweet taste on the
tongue in bakery products. The functionality it brings
to baked goods makes it a challenging ingredient to
replace. "Sugar reduction in every other category is a
pretty simple task," said Thom King, president and CEO,
Steviva Ingredients, Portland, OR. "In baked goods, it's
almost like alchemy."
Depending on the application, sugar can provide
structure, moisture, texture and impact shelf life.
"Sugar plays an important part in the Maillard reaction

Honey brings to baked goods its plethora of functional
properties and flavor as well as good consumer perception.
Shutterstock

Honey's hold on natural sweeteners
Fibers and stevia may be two options that can replace sugar
and look friendly to the consumer on the ingredient label,
but one time-tested sweetener still remains ... honey.
Honey not only provides its signature sweet flavor to
baked goods, but its 17% moisture content also naturally
preserves shelf life, which makes it appealing to glutenfree bakers who struggle with dry, crumbly products.
Honey also contributes positively to mouthfeel and lends
its rich color to whatever formulation it's added to. In
bread, it can mask the bitter flavors of whole grains, and
energy bars can take advantage of the ingredient's binding
properties and nutritional attributes.
Honey brings to any product its household name and
good consumer vibes. "Sweeteners haven't been treated
kindly by the media lately, said Keith Seiz, ingredient
"
marketing manager, National Honey Board. "What honey
brings to bakers is the ability to use a sweetener that
people see in their pantries every day.
"

54 Baking & Snack March 2015 / www.bakingandsnack.com

of baked goods, which gives us the caramelized sugar
flavor and golden brown color that we have grown to
expect from our chocolate chip cookies and blueberry
muffins," said Marquita Johnson, senior application
specialist, PureCircle, Oak Brook, IL. "Less sugar also
means less water binding and more water available for
gluten formation and gelatinization of starches, which
can lead to more dense and crumbly baked goods.
Additionally, sugar helps to incorporate air during batter preparation, which creates leavening, leading to
lighter, fluffier products."
With so many product qualities relying on sugar,
polyols such as maltitol are often the first choice to
replace the most functions of sugar with one ingredient, according to Mr. Shinsato. "Maltitol is very similar
in physical properties to sugar," he said. "It has a very
comparable weight as well as particle size and shape."
Maltitol also is 90% as sweet as sugar, so bakers don't
need to add a high-potency sweetener to replicate taste.
"The other thing to think about is, you can reduce
added sugars, but you have to ask yourself if you want
to also reduce calories," Mr. Buck said. Not only do
polyols not appear as sugar on the label while still
maintaining sugar's functionality, but they also lower
calories. "While polyols and sugars by definition are
both carbohydrates, polyols are not sugars," he said.
"Sorbitol has 2.6 Cal per g, so it would be a way to reduce calories as well." ADM also offers maltodextrins
and corn syrups that can range between 1.6 Cal per g to
2.2 Cal per g vs. 4 Cal per g for sucrose.
New Century, KS-based DuPont Nutrition & Health's
Litesse polydextrose also can deliver reduced calories
while replacing sugar with only 1 Cal per g. The ingredient can be used as an equal-weight basis to replace
30 to 50% of sugar while maintaining finished product
quality. Because Litesse is not as sweet as sugar, it can
be paired with high-intensity sweeteners to deliver the
desired flavor profile.
It's true that there sometimes isn't one ingredient that
can replace sugar, but by combining ingredients, bakers
can mimic the flavor and functionality. For Cargill, this
systems approach means finding the appropriate sweetener alternative and, when necessary, pairing that ingredient with texturizers or stabilizers to get the functionality a product requires. "When it comes to functional
bulking, there are a lot of tools: Oliggo-Fiber chicory
root inulin, Zerose erythritol, reduced-sugar corn syrup
and Maltidex maltitol," Ms. Goulson said.

Cleaning up sweeteners
If bakers want to pursue a clean ingredient list, however,
polyols may not be acceptable. "Clean-label sugar reduction has been a trend for the past four years and will con-

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