Breads, Sweet

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

breads, sweet, belong to one of three major categories within the greater bread kingdom, the other two being lean bread (little or no fat and sugar, as in French bread) and enriched breads (moderate amounts of sugars and fats, each typically less than 10 percent of the flour weight, as in sandwich breads, challah, soft rolls, and the like). Sweet breads are also known as rich breads, meaning that the ratio of sugar to total flour weight is anywhere from 1:10 to 1:4, and the ratio of butter or other fats to total flour weight is from 1:10 to 9:10. For this reason this category is referred to more properly as “sweet rich breads.”