Benefits of and Baking With Fructose

Before we start talking about the variety of sugar substitutes out there, its important to review the role of sugar in baking.  We already know the role that sugar plays in impeding weight loss and helping you to drop weight, but there's a whole other story in baking.  Sugar provides moisture and tenderness, liquefies when it bakes, increases the shelf-life of finished products, caramelizes at high temperatures, and of course, adds sweetness.  Refined sugar, whether from sugar beets or sugar cane, helps cookies spread during baking, allowing their crisp texture, too, and therefore, bakers can't simply replace sugar with a different sweetener. Though in many recipes, you can decrease the amount of sugar by up to one third without affecting the quality of the product.