I might be lying...

Something interesting happened on today. I made an experiment with reducing sugars, which are a kind of sugars known to be able to reduce certain metal ions (i.e. Ag+) through their aldehyde or alpha-hydroxy-ketone groups.
I made a solution of sugar and lye as follows:
- Table sugar (sucrose) -> 20grs
- Lye pellets (NOT anhydrous, they clump. I can't measure how much water there is in) -> 16grs
--> Into 50ml of tap water.

I made tests and it "proved to be a developer, with poor shadow density but rendering all detail".
I thought I had found a replacement for Vitamin C in my Rude Rodinal but...

Then I remembered:


(This comes from the Ilford datasheet for my KENTMERE VC deluxe RC paper)

You couldn't believe how I felt.
I made another test, using a heavily fogged paper strip and I used as "Developer" a plain saturated solution of lye pellets. I knew if the developer in the paper was of interest I just had to activate it. It worked.
But I truly wanted to experiment with alternative developers!! Silver monohydride!! (AgH!!)

How can we get around this? For my tests are biased...

mix up your own emulsion and coat it on some substrate. then you will know what is in it.

Or test it on film. Developer Incorporated is a thing, but only on enlarging papers. As far as I know, there are no DI films.

Sugar is used as the reducing agent in chemically silvering a mirror -- with the silver starting in an ammoniacal nitrate solution. Adding a small amount of sugar solution to that silvering solution will result in the silver plating out on the container and anything else wetted by the solution (including a telescope mirror) over a pretty short period, comparable to developing time. Try your lye-sugar solution on a 35mm leader clip. Try the lye alone on the same film. That will tell you something.

Those are good replies. I honestly thank you.

I haven't tried to make my own emulsion yet because of cost, and because I need more equipment and I can mess it up very easily. But it's on my plans for sure.

Next time I get some film I'll try using the leader for something like this, for now, I've already cut all the leaders available to me, and the results weren't great: Rude Rodinal didn't develop my leader (I could see no image, nor colour change) and after a couple of hours the emulsion ripped from the film base. My ilford rapid fixer at 1+9 dillution didn't clear the film completely, but I surely didn't left it long enough.

Anyway, that's it by now... Could there be any other way? Out of interest...

It's because of the Tollens' reagent that I thought it might work, if anything sugar is a well known retardant for developing that I guess doesn't reduce developers achievable density, giving more control over pyro developers, and mostly used on Wet Plate Collodion photography to control the aggresive-if-alone ferrous sulphate developer. (if it doesn't work a good try would be adding some ammonia, if I could my hands on some...)
Hint: Cyanotype ferric tris-oxalate which has become ferrous by the action of sunlight does work as a cold tone developer (And I can tell it wasn't the developer in the paper because the solution is highly acidic, so there's no way it could have been activated )

Before organic developers were invented (Rodinal, around 1880) ferrous sulfate was the most common developing agent, and it worked in a mildly acidic solution. You can probably get that locally; it's used as a supplement for gardening (some plants need iron added to the soil in some soils). If you have instant coffee (or brewed, but instant works better), there's always Caffenol.