Building a better low-sugar doughnut makes the breakfast of champions even better

Could the doughnut get any better?

An aficionado’s answer may be “no.” After all, what other food feels as at-home at a breakfast table as on a dessert tray? Even a run-of-the-mill doughnut tickles all the sensory bliss points our brains seek to satisfy: It’s sweet, crispy on the outside, cakey on the inside, just greasy enough and — thanks to all those sprinkles, glazes and drizzles — a feast for the eyes. The mere scent of a freshly fried batch can set a mouth to watering.

If only it weren’t for the whole sugar thing. Because, at the risk of stating the obvious, doughnuts can pack a wallop — so much so that the Cleveland Clinic ranked them among the five worst breakfast foods out there. And these days, that’s a liability even a bliss-point pastry can ill afford to bear.

So how could the doughnut be better? By getting its sugar levels in shape.

Time-to-time request

Rachel Zemser, a food-industry consultant and founder of A La Carte Connections, knows her way around a doughnut. (Her desert-island pick: the old-fashioned.) She also knows her way around a low-sugar reformulation, particularly in the bakery space.

“In general, clients always want low-carb baked goods,” she said. And while requests to slash sugars in doughnuts aren’t “super-frequent,” she added, “It is one of those things that comes up from time to time.”

Low sugar isn’t low carb

For example, when the team at Good Journey Donuts petitioned Zemser to help turn its dream of a low-sugar, keto-friendly doughnut into reality, one lesson that all parties learned in the process was that as far as sugar is concerned, not all doughnuts are created equal.

“I want to be clear,” Zemser emphasized. “Making a doughnut low-sugar isn’t the same as making it low-carb” — a distinction that makes all the difference because while traditional doughnuts (i.e., those made of a flour-based dough) are inherently carb-rich, their sugar content varies widely.

Spanning the sugar spectrum

Just consider doughnuts from non-Western cuisines and cultures, Zemser suggested — like Chinese youtiao, savory fried dough sticks often served with tea or soymilk. “In fact,” she said, “a lot of ethnic doughnuts aren’t high in sugar the way American Dunkin’ or Krispy Kremes are.”

Even these doughnuts run the sugar gamut, with Dunkin’ Donuts’ chocolate-crème variety, for example, delivering a whopping 35 grams of sugar per, while one of the chain’s old-fashioned treats will set you back a relatively modest 10 grams.

That pleases an old-fashioned fan like Zemser — but it also scans with her senses. “When you eat it, it’s not really that sweet,” she noted. “So while doughnuts will almost always have a lot of carbs, they don’t all have the same amount of sugar.” And that’s bound to shape low-sugar reformulation.

Target the toppings

In fact, “Reformulating a doughnut to be lower in sugar is not the most challenging thing in the world,” Zemser insisted, particularly vis-à-vis making it low-carb.

While the latter involves completely revamping a doughnut’s flour base, the former is more of a precision operation targeting sugar “hot spots.” And as Zemser noted, “If you think about it, there aren’t a lot of places in a doughnut where sugar can hide: It’s either in the cake itself — which it usually isn’t — or it’ll be in the filling, the frosting, the inclusions.”

Miracle ingredient

Once we’ve identified these targets, “We have a lot of great sugar alternatives for replacing it,” Zemser continued: “allulose, sugar alcohols like erythritol, fiber syrups and high-intensity sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit.”

However, noted Kristoffer Quiaoit, Good Journey’s cofounder and a fan of glazed blueberry cake doughnuts, “especially when they’re warm … Sweeteners don’t have all the properties sugar does.”

He even calls sugar “a miracle baking ingredient.” Why? “It not only adds sweetness, but can provide humectant properties, too. It can extend shelf life, and it creates delicious flavor notes and browned colors when it’s cooked because it goes through the Maillard reaction. It works really well with fats in baked goods, it’s water-soluble, it provides bulk and it can improve texture.”

That’s a tough act to follow. And as Quiaoit pointed out, “Some high-intensity sweeteners have lingering aftertastes. Some don’t match sugar’s bulk or add any Maillard effects. Sugar alcohols like erythritol may be 70% as sweet as sugar, but they can also have a cooling effect. And allulose is an amazing sweetener, but it doesn’t crystallize.”

Formulation follows function

None of this spells doughnut doom, of course — as Good Journey’s successful sugar cut proves. But it does mean that achieving low-sugar success requires not just knowing where your doughnut’s sugar is, but what it’s doing there.

For example, when replacing sugar in icings, inclusions and fillings, Quiaoit said, “You'll need to consider the sweetener’s solubility: Is it water- or fat-soluble? How does it affect mouthfeel? And will it crystallize or not?”

Zemser added browning properties to that list, as “erythritol crystallizes, for example, but doesn’t really brown well, while allulose will brown but doesn’t crystallize.”

Feel the heat

“If you’re targeting the dough,” she went on, “you’ve got to make sure your reformulation bakes or fries well to give you the right textures after you’ve replaced the sugar.”

And here, Quiaoit stressed the importance of Maillard browning. “Doughnuts cook faster in a fryer than in an oven,” he explained. “So a baked doughnut will have more time for the Maillard process — but the process will still happen faster in a fryer even if it’s in there for less time. All of that will influence what type of sweetener system you use.”

Sugar is yeast food, too, he added. “So without sugar or starch, you have to rely on chemical leavening. And our doughnuts have neither, so yeast is off the table for now.”

Order of operations

Operational issues deserve their own consideration. “You have to factor in the equipment you use to deposit the dough into oven molds or the fryer,” Quiaoit advised. “Different sweeteners will affect the batter’s viscosity and stickiness.”

And as Zemser was quick to note, “No one wants to eat old doughnuts.” Though brands formulate retail packaged options to last longer, one of the tools they use to achieve that extended shelf life is sugar, which binds water both to maintain texture and sequester it from yeasts and molds.

Lower its levels enough, Zemser said, and you may have to swap in preservatives or lean on the water-binding properties of, say, allulose or erythritol.

Taste test

But perhaps more than any other stumbling block, “One of the biggest in low-sugar reformulation is reducing a doughnut’s sugar content without entirely sacrificing indulgent flavor,” Philip Caputo, marketing and consumer insights manager at Virginia Dare, said.

And here again, alternative sweeteners only get you so far, whether because of “off” tastes, inadequate sugar mimicry or their propensity to break down and become bitter during baking or frying, he said.

That’s why Caputo recommends recruiting a flavor house into the sugar-reduction effort. “Flavorists will first assess your formulation and recommend the most compatible alternative sweeteners — helping to identify any problematic components they might introduce to your product’s flavor profile,” he explained. “They can then use flavorings and extracts to rebalance taste, working with you to test various combinations and adjust formulations to get as close to a one-to-one match of the original as possible.”

Middle ground

And one final tip from Zemser: Go “low,” not “no.”

“If you’re just reducing and not eliminating sugar, then you can get some real sugar in there,” she argued. “And with real sugar, you could use a combination of allulose and sucrose for caramelization, crystallization and the right texture …. So reduction is best for functionality; you have a better chance of getting near a full match. Elimination is trickier, and you have to be prepared to accept something that’s not the same as the original.”