The first thing I noticed about American food is that all their bread has sugar in it. I've absolutely no idea how anyone can stand eating the stuff.

This is so true. I spent tons of time in US supermarkets searching for bread that is not sweet. The regular sweet bread is only good for toasts with honey, or sandwiches with Nutella or something similar, I couldn't stand eating it with ham or cheese.

It's been a while since I was making bread regularly, but I don't think I've ever seen a bread recipe that didn't include sugar. I was under the impression that yeast must eat _something_ in order to make the dough rise.

edit: It looks like my mother has found some, but neither one of us really understands how rising works in these cases.

Technically, the only ingredients required to make bread are flour, yeast, salt and water.

Active dry yeast will proof just fine without sugar, just a little more slowly. But sugar does increase the yeast's activity. This can be useful when you are trying to revive common active dry yeast from its freeze-dried stupor.

Amazing ... I used to make bread weekly (and my flatmate was a downright bread maniac), and none of the recipes I ever saw included sugar.

Bread is really simple -- the only things you need are flour, yeast (or sourdough starter), and water; optionally maybe salt or eggs (but these are definitely not necessary). Everything else is decoration.

[You don't even need a bowl or utensils! Just make a simple bowl shape on the counter with flour and mix in the liquid stuff from the center. Of course you do need an oven of some sort (but the bread can be cooked on a simple metal plate)... :]

I make my own pizza dough and other breads that rises quite happily with no sugar in the mix. There's really no need for sugar, though I don't know enough about yeast to tell you how it works.

AFAIK, the yeasties will eat lots of stuff, including flour, etc.

[I vaguely recall adding not sugar, but corn starch to warm water to get the yeast going. It's been a long time though ...]

My old German teacher said the same thing about American food. Everything has sugar in it.

I tend towards hypoglycemia and have diabetes in my family, so I've always been weary of sugar. I try to avoid it during a work day and in the evenings, so I don't 100% avoid it, and I manage fairly well but it means getting to know what products contain sugar and what doesn't.

Some lox recipes include sugar:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Lox-at-14-the-Cost/