A lot of breads in North America have a lot of added sugars. You have to actually go out of your way to find breads that aren't sweetened significantly.
> A lot of breads in North America have a lot of added sugars.
The sugar feeds the yeast to make the bread rise. No sugar == solid lump of rock-hard bread-rock.
Sugar is one of the key ingredients in Western-style fluffy loaves, particularly wholegrain flours which need an accelerated fermentation process so that they rise before being 'set' by cooking. Which is nicely ironic since we've been conditioned that wholegrain is the healthy choice!
Sugar also helps to prevent staling, which is critical in home-baked breads which barely last 12 hours even with that assistance.
I'm not saying we should have NO sugar in our bread. But it's to the point where if you google "Why is American bread so sweet?" you'll find countless examples of Europeans comparing American bread to cake.
This is well beyond the scope of "feeding the yeast".
The amount is tiny though. I make my own bread, and you can use just half a teaspoon in a loaf, it's just to get the yeast going, and they probably metabolise most of it. I've also experimented with using part milk so they use the lactose instead, and this also gives a nice consistency to the bread (still working on further improving this though!)
This is incorrect. It's perfectly possible to make light fluffy bread without adding sugar. Sugar might be added to accelerate the process for economic reasons, but that's something else.
ADDED sugar. As in "let's dump a bunch of refined white sugar or high fructose corn syrup in this dough to make it sell better to our sugar-addicted customers."
When I lived in the UK, I started making my own bread (I'm from Germany, we have a bit of a reputation for our bread). I have a rye sourdough from which I bake a rye and wheat mixed loaf. It's quite heavy -- slightly over 1kg for a large loaf tin (IKEA DRÖMMAR, to be precise) -- but stores well and I really enjoy the taste. The sourdough is my fridge pet (so to say), but since it lives in the fridge, it needs to be fed only once every two to three weeks, or whenever you bake it. I've had it for 1½ years now.
American bread and European breads (including British) are a bit different -- Americans like a sweeter loaf. A traditional American sandwich bread often has milk and/or sugar. The milk increases sweetness.
I didn't do it because of sugars, but I'm glad that none are added -- after a couple of months or so, I had enough of supermarket bread ;) There are easier ways to make your own bread though, soda bread is particularly quick and easy (although you'd typically use a bit of sugar for the yeast). It's literally 1h (ok, maybe 1h10m) from stepping into the kitchen to taking the loaf out of the oven.
