[nerdbert]

> Did people in the past make bread without sugar?

They do it in the present.

Greetings from Europe. I hold in my hand a loaf of cheap (€1.20) supermarket bread, which tastes perfectly pleasant. The little supermarket on my street moves a full shelf of this every day.

The ingredients are:

- Wholewheat flour

- Water

- Wheat gluten

- Yeast

- Malt flour (barley, wheat)

- Rye sourdough powder

- Salt

- Sesame seeds

- Poppy seeds

- Polenta

- Rapeseed oil

I have experienced the bread in the USA and it tastes like a light cake. The sugar makes it cloying to my taste. I guess it's all about what you're used to. But yes, bread without sugar is a very normal thing, and I wouldn't want sugar in mine.

[hollerith]

The "Malt flour" in your bread is probably mostly sugar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malt#:~:text=modifying%20the%2....

Also, it is pretty easy to buy bread not containing sugar in the US.

[ahartmetz]

Malt flour contains 6-20% of sugar according to a German source I've found, so together with its low rank in the ingredient list, it's not a whole lot of sugar.