If you get bored making bread recipes with cane sugar or prefer a healthier alternative, honey can be substituted with a couple of minor alterations to the recipe. Essentially, think of honey as 3/4 sugar and 1/4 water. So if a recipe requires 1 cup of sugar, then you’ll use 1 1/3 cups of honey (1/ (3/4) = 1 1/3) and reduce the liquid by 1/3 cup. Please note that I’m only talking with regards to yeast bread baking. Honey is acidic, which might cause issues with quick bread recipes (those leavened using baking powder), so this substitution could cause problems in those recipes.
For the recipes I’ve posted here, the amount of sugar is small. Therefore, the amount of extra water added is negligible. For instance, a recipe that calls for 1/4 cup of sugar would use 1/3 cup of honey. The extra water there is 1/12 of a cup- that’s a little over a tablespoon of water. If using a high-gluten flour like KA, clearly substituting honey in these amounts is not a problem.
As to why bother substituting? Well, honey is a natural sugar versus the highly processed white stuff that comes in a bag. There are all sorts of health benefits that come along with that difference. There’s a nice (long) article about the benefits of honey over sugar here. Personally, I can’t taste a difference when using honey but my taste buds aren’t the most discerning out there. I switch them up just for a change of pace in how I make the bread, simple as that. Although after reading that article, I may use honey more often.
UPDATE: Well, that article I linked is pretty screechy. I guess that’ll learn me for linking before reading the whole thing. At least the first half isn’t bad. At any rate, I don’t think I’ll get too much argument about the notion that honey is healthier than cane sugar, which was my main point.