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Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed almost all typical US breads have way too much sugar. Maybe I'm weird, but I generally hate sweet flavors and sugar, so it's very noticeable to me. Bread making is a hobby of mine (with zero sugar, or very little depending), and a good bread has such intricate tastes. Why do we instead just hammer it with sugar, is that what people really prefer? I'm not intending to be condescending, just curious.

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When I first got to the US I found it hard to find non-sugar-y bread. The main issue for me was that even the "hippie bread" often has a bunch of "hidden" sugar (it's there, but listed as malt, or honey, or something secretly sugary) - and I'd always miss it on the label!

After the Xth time I got tricked into buying sugar-bread I started making my own... have been baking once a week for 5 years now. It's the most satisfying accidental hobby I've ever had.

The weird thing is, I also started dialing down the salt a bit - and now I really notice how much salt is in bread too. Which sucks as I can easy give up sugar, but salt... oh no!

Bread made without salt also doesn’t work. You get a brick. I’ve settled on 9g for 440g flour. Focaccia recipes use a ton of salt, and are particularly delicious (see recipe below, for which I half all quantities).

What sort of bread do you make?

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup/audio/20...

>> Bread made without salt also doesn’t work. You get a brick.

A relative of mine has kidney disease so I've been baking them wholemeal breads without any salt at all for the last few months. They come out fluffy and springy, like orindarily salted bread.

I have heard what you say before, many times. I've looked around at bread-making forums to find bread recipes and there's often discussions about "can you make bread without salt"? Curiously, most of those threads are full of comments that state categorically that bread can't be made without salt (because it will turn out bland, it will over-ferment, it won't have the right texture and so on) but I very, very rarely have seen any comments saying that someone tried to actually make bread without salt and somehow failed. Pretty much the only case I could find was of a lady who ended up with very sticky dough and then realised she hadn't used any salt.

Bottom line, "you can't make bread without salt" is some kind of traditional wisdom that people repeat often but attempt to test very rarely. I've tested it thorougly for several months and it's false.

Edit: Oh, actually now that I think of it- you don't have to take my word for it. Traditional Tuscan bread has been made for generations without salt:

https://www.thegrandwinetour.com/en/popular-foods-of-italy/w...

Thanks for this - interesting. My experience of bread without salt come from my various errors. I make bread 3 or 4 times per week and have forgotten to add salt on occasion. I’ll try your recipe. Again, thanks.

Note that I use wholemean flours, a combination thereof, which definitely helps the taste. Also, I tried the papa di pomodoro recipe in the link above and it's actually quite delicious and very easy to make.

Hey do you have any saltless recipes you use you could shaew? Like the other poster, I assumed it was necessary, but I'd love to try it.

I don't really have a recipe, as such. I usually mix, say, 100g of dark rye flour, 200g of hard white flour and 200g of wholemeal, einkorn, barley or spelt flour with a big dollop of my sourdough and add water until I feel it's right. I leave it for a couple of hours to autolyse (normally done before adding yeast, but I find that's too much hassle to mix in the sourdough later) then give it a good knead for 10-15 minutes. I let it sit overnight, say 12 hours, to rise in a covered glass bowl, then I take it out of the bowl very carefully (because it's a big sponge of dough at that point) and bake it at 230 degrees C (which just happens to be the maximum temperature in my mini-oven) until it makes a hollow sound when I hit it with a wooden spoon (about 60 minutes, it's a weak oven). I let it sit for 20 minutes before cutting into it. And avoid putting any pictures on Instagram whatsoever, very important for the success of the bake, that :P

My flour proportions are completely non-standard, I fear, that is I don't follow any standard baker's percentages or anything. In general, I make it up as I go along, so I'm most likely doing something at least unorthodox. But it seems to be working, probably because it's hard to make really bad bread with good, organic, wholemeal flours.

Edit: really sorry for the vagueness of the recipe. This is how I cook, in general, making it up as I go along. I like to surprise myself, I guess.

Hey it's fine, my wife is mainly similar and I finally "made" her write it down since so many people kept asking for her recipe and her answer was about like yours :). We have a sourdough going so will give it a try, thanks a lot.

Good luck, I hope it works out great :)

Welcome to Asia, where most "bread" is what Europeans would consider pastries, only with mayonnaise, tuna, pork, seaweed etc on top:

https://www.breadtalk.com.sg/products/bread/whats-new

Of course, in China even the bacon (肉干) and beans (豆沙) are sweet.

I've noticed this in Asian bakeries in the US. Everything is made with the same very sweet, fluffy pastry. That includes savory items like green onion buns or those ones with a cold hotdog in them. It's an interesting but somewhat unsettling combination of flavors.

Of the various chains in China, I found Paris Baguette to have the most bread-like bread. Other chains mostly offered some kind of pastry/bread hybrid with sweet dough and various fillings, with perhaps 1–2 kinds of proper bread products hidden away somewhere.

Apparently it's a Korean company: https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3092449/kore...

First thing I noticed when I moved to the US. It was quite the shock.

We put way too much of everything in everything. Subtlety goes against our nature.

Part of it is the texture.

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