Tried using honey instead of sugar in my sourdough and got a brick instead of bread

I swapped out 50g of sugar for honey in my usual sourdough recipe last weekend (figured it would be a fun experiment) and the loaf came out super dense and flat. The honey made the dough way too sticky and it never rose properly, even after a 4-hour proof. Has anyone else had this fail, or is there a trick to making honey work in yeast breads?

2 comments

2 Comments

sethb454d ago

slower burn" is basically how everything good works anymore, nobody's got patience for the slow burn these days.

grayperez5d ago

Honey is actually more hygroscopic than sugar, so it pulls moisture from the air and makes the dough stickier right from the start. That extra moisture probably threw off your hydration ratio and made the dough too slack to hold its structure during the rise. Also, honey has natural antimicrobial properties that can slow down yeast activity, so a 4-hour proof might not have been enough time for the yeast to do its thing. You could try cutting back on the water by about 20 grams when you sub in honey, and let it proof for an extra hour or two to compensate. Sugar feeds yeast quickly, but honey is a slower burn, so the dough needs more patience, not less.

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