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Re: moisture content of honey

Dave Glaze <daveglaze@shaw.ca>
Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:19:27 -0800
v105.n003.5
Fredericka Cohen wrote:
>Now I want to further enhance this bread by replacing the sugar with 
>honey >but I have twisted my brain trying to calculate the liquid difference!

Fredericka,

The USDA hosts a nutrition site that gives the moisture content of several 
foods.  The link to the site is:
  "Nutrient list 
<http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR17/wtrank/wt_rank.html>"

This will bring up a list of nutrients, the first one being 
"moisture".  Clicking on the green "A" beside moisture will bring up a 
window which allows you to open up an Adobe Reader document that list all 
kinds of foods with their moisture content.  Scroll to Honey and you will 
see the amount of water in honey.  In this case about 17% by weight.  The 
moisture content of granulated sugar is listed as containing 0% water.

Converting everything to grams, I came up with the following:

Your recipe calls for 396 grams of water and 66 grams of sugar.  If honey 
is 83% sugar and 17% water, then your recipe, substituting the honey for 
the sugar, would become 356 grams of water and 79 grams of honey, or 1.5 
cups water and 3.8 TB (11 tsp) honey.

I hope my calculations are right.  In the end, this might not work for all 
honeys as some seem to be thinner than others.  But it is a 
start.  Calculating granular items by volume is not very accurate.

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Dave