Honey vs Sugar

[freddy_krugerrand]

What exactly does honey do differently they sugar in pizza dough?

[DocSpine]

Well honey is sweeter than sugar so you would use less. You will need to decrease the water by approximately 1/8 of a cup when using 1/4 cup of honey instead of sugar.
Flavor profile is a little different, I like honey better.
From a chemical/baking standpoint I think they are equal

From a nutritional view (Chiropractor) refined sugar is evil

[Pete-zza]

Honey and sucrose are not the same chemically and do not perform the same within a dough. Honey is a monosaccharide (reducing sugar) that is composed of 38.5% fructose, 31% glucose, and maltose (7.2%), sucrose (about 1%) and higher saccharides. Sucrose, or ordinary granulated table sugar, is a polysachharide that has to cleaved into the reducing sugars fructose and glurcose. Fructose is about 1.6 times sweeter than sucrose, but yeast, which consumes only reducing sugars, prefers sucrose over fructose and ferments the sugars faster when using sucrose over fructose, as the experiment described at http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/nat_Fak_IV/Organische_Chemie/Didaktik/Keusch/D-fermentation_sugar-e.htm shows. As a whole, honey has about the same relative sweetness as sucrose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey), and, according to our resident technical guru, November, honey can replace sucrose in a recipe on an equal weight basis, as he once explained to me in Reply 9 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6372.msg54612/topicseen.html#msg54612. However, honey has about 17% water (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/sweets/5568/2), and, as a result, Freddy may want to lower the formula hydration to take into account the water content of the honey.

There are over 300 kinds of honey in the U.S., and they come in different colors and flavor profiles. The color will have an effect on the final crust coloration. Also, honeys can be raw and unprocessed or they can be processed and lack some of the enzymes of raw honey, which can affect the dough's performance. This subject is discussed in a series of posts at the PMQ Think Tank starting with the post at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4669&hilit=#p26883.

Since Freddy is in Hawaii, which has some wonderful raw white honeys, my best advice to him is to conduct some simple experiments in which he swaps out the sugar in his dough formulation with raw honey. He will learn a lot from the exercise and he will remember things better than simply relying on what people tell him is the answer to his question. Freddy used the term "exactly" in his original question. His tests using honey will be as exact as he is likely to get in a non-scientific, non-laboratory setting.

Peter

[freddy_krugerrand]

Will there be a noticeable taste or texture difference?  I understand the color of the dough may change but will the "average" person be able to tell a difference if you used honey or sugar in a blind taste test?

[DocSpine]

Wow I got overwhelmed by that.
To sum it up.
Try it and see what works best for you.

There are no average people.


http://www.umd.umich.edu/sep/students/mgmann/mgmann_exp.html

http://www.honey.com/images/downloads/ethnicbr.pdf

" nine of the ten formulations were rated
by consumer panelists
with the liquid or dry
honey formulations as
"liked best" when
compared to a control
bread without honey."

[Pete-zza]

Will there be a noticeable taste or texture difference?  I understand the color of the dough may change but will the "average" person be able to tell a difference if you used honey or sugar in a blind taste test?

Freddy,

It is hard for me to say because it has been a while since I last used honey in a dough and I did not do a side-by-side blind test. However, I found that honey had a good effect on the rheology and extensibility of the dough and it appears to have greater hygroscopicity than table sugar, making the dough perhaps a bit more tender and soft. One example where I used honey in a quantity large enough (5%) to be noticeable in the finished crust and to produce a soft crust and crumb was for an emergency Papa John's clone, as discussed in Reply 52 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg66312.html#msg66312. Long before I started with the PJ clones, I used honey in variations of Randy's version of a PJ clone, at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1707.0.html. Randy would be a better one to comment on the honey vs. sucrose issue, although we have other members like fazzari and Norma who have done a lot of work with Peter Reinhart dough formulations calling for large amounts of honey, and may be better equipped to answer your question. The Reinhart recipes can usually be used with either sugar or honey, so maybe some other member has tried both and can comment on the differences.

I think you would have to find a material improvement to use honey instead of sucrose, especially for a commercial product. I was in the supermarket recently looking at all kinds of sweeteners and was appalled at how expensive honey has become. According to the studies I have read about, consumers are willing to pay about 10-15% more for products with honey but I don't know whether that would apply to pizzas.

Peter

[DocSpine]

2 cup warm water
4  cup Pizza flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 tsp instant yeast
4 tbsp honey
6 tbsp olive oil
3 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder

my go to honey crust recipe sorry have not put it into percents yet

[norma427]

Freddy,

I have worked with honey in different doughs, but mostly in higher hydration Reinhart doughs that needed a reball after the dough fermented for awhile.  I really liked the pizzas from the Reinhart formulas, and the rims were nice and moist, but I wouldn’t think those formulas would be easy to execute in a commercial setting.  I did try, but with a reball things get complicated.  I also have added various kinds of sugars to doughs, but don’t think sugar is really necessary unless you are trying to either get sweetness in the crust or trying to clone a pizza with sugar in the dough.  

I never tried a direct comparison in a dough between honey and sucrose.

Norma

[scott r]

I have done some side by side comparisons, and have found that in the amounts I would typically use (less than 2%) it doesn't make a big difference.    I think when you get up above that amount you may start to see changes, but unfortunately at those percentages things start tasting too sweet for me, and my higher temp bakes burn too easily.     If you are making pizzas under 550 degrees you can probably get away with using more sugar or honey, and in these applications the honey does seem to provide a slightly better flavor and texture.  Another thing to consider is brown sugar, which is nice because the molasses included in brown sugar provides a different type of food for the yeast.    Good luck!