{"id":2464,"date":"2013-11-15T00:33:01","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T23:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/?p=2464"},"modified":"2013-11-15T00:35:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T23:35:00","slug":"why-does-sugar-make-baked-goods-moister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/ingredients\/why-does-sugar-make-baked-goods-moister","title":{"rendered":"Why does sugar make pastry products moister?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found this <strong>interesting video<\/strong> on my Facebook yesterday. It is about <strong>sugar<\/strong>, among other things.<\/p>\n<p>I loved the beginning which captures the<strong> essence of pastry<\/strong> with one sentence:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you understand science, at least some of it, you&#8217;re going to have <strong>more power over your food<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Pastry is chemistry and any recipe is like a formula. This video addresses one interesting topic: <strong>why does sugar make products moister?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The answer is pretty easy: sugar makes products moister because it is <strong>hygroscopic<\/strong>.<br \/>\nWhat? :-S<\/p>\n<p>Let me brag a bit about my knowledge of Greek (yeah, we still learn ancient Greek in Italian high schools): <em>hygr\u00f3s<\/em> means &#8220;humid&#8221; and <em>scop\u00e8o<\/em> is a verb that literally means &#8220;to look at&#8221;: in few words, <strong>hygroscopic refers to the ability of a substance to attract and hold water molecules<\/strong> from the surrounding environment. Sugar loves water!<\/p>\n<p>That also explains two other phenomena that I faced as a beginner p\u00e2tissier:<br \/>\n&#8211; Sprinkle <strong>powdered sugar over a cake; the next day it&#8217;s gone!<\/strong> It is actually still there, just melted by the water it has attracted from the moisture of the cake.<br \/>\n&#8211; Make amazing <strong>caramel decorations<\/strong> for a cake; store the cake in the fridge and <strong>after a few hours the decorations are gone<\/strong>! Same explanation as above: the<strong> humidity in the fridge and in the cake &#8220;melt&#8221; the sugar<\/strong> and make it &#8220;disappear&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>More information in this video by celebrity chef and TV host <strong>Alton Brown<\/strong> (starts at 2:08):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DGp-hRxeylM?rel=0\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found this interesting video on my Facebook yesterday. It is about sugar, among other things. I loved the beginning which captures the essence of pastry with one sentence: If you understand science, at least some of it, you&#8217;re going to have more power over your food. Pastry is chemistry and any recipe is like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[361,362,358,363,364],"class_list":["post-2464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ingredients","tag-chemistry","tag-food","tag-moist","tag-sugar","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}