Sweetening the pandesal - Why and how it became sweet

image source

Traditional pan desal dough had little sugar and no eggs

Recipes had only 4 percent sugar in the dough.Bakers started adding and then increasing the amount of sugar so that today's pa desal can have as much as 18 percent to 20 percent sugar content.

Adding more sugar was done presumably to lengthen the shelf life of breads.Thus the salty bread Filipino's knew and love became sweeter and softer.Even the word morphed into the one word "pandesal," a short version of the original.

image source

This bread roll is so popular among Filipinos that anyone growing up from northern to southern Philippines knows what it is. Bakeries all over the country always have hot pandesals for sale especially mornings and afternoons when they’re widely consumed.

Baking experts have no idea when the pan desal became sweet

Not one of the bakers and bread expert can pinpoint exactly when the pandesal begun losing its original flavor.Since many of the bakers came from Cuenca,Batangas, some said that the change in taste started from there.What some remembered was that as far back 1950's the pandesal was already sweet.Another source offered that the sweet pa de sal trend began during the term of Pres.Marcos [1965-1986] when sugar prices dropped in the world market and, to help local sugar cane grower,the National food authority found ways to increase the consumption of sugar. Sweetening our bread mixes for all sorts of panaderia products was probably one of them.