[Sca-cooks] baking at high altitudes

Susan Lin susanrlin at gmail.com
Wed Feb 25 06:56:00 PST 2009


For many other dishes I guess you can solve things by using a pressure
cooker, but I guess that doesn't work for baking...
 Yeah - pressure cooked cake - well, that doesn't go over very well!
Actually it does - I'm guessing it would go all over the kitchen when it
explodes!

I do love my pressure cooker for cooking pumpkin and long grain wild rice.
I like it for cooking meats when you're in a hurry as well.  Even at high
altitude it works just fine.

The problem with the yeast is that it puffs too much.  So, you have to use
less in regular loaves of bread/pastry.  Usually you have to add more water
because it's so dry and less levening because of the air pressure.  And
sometimes - the original recipe works just fine - go figure!!!

When I'm in a hurry and use my bread machine I have to remember to only make
a 1 1/2# loaf - if I try to make a 2# loaf I almost always have it bubble
over and make a mess.

This being a dense bread (and I would not use the machine for this) I think
I'll try using the yeast as stated and see how it goes.  I have kasha and
not raw groats (even the name sounds yucky!) - I can grind them and see what
I get.

I'll keep you posted.

-S

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Stefan li Rous
<StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>wrote:

> Shoshanna said:
>
> <<< I'll see if I can lighten it up some and I'll post my success or
> failure
> whichever it is.  At over a mile up yeast does some strange stuff so who
> knows! >>>
>
> You mentioned this before in another message as well but you also mentioned
> that it was dry? cool? there also as well and I was wondering if it was the
> dryness or the altitude which was bothering the yeasts. Does starting with
> more yeast not solve this problem? Or is it less that the yeast aren't
> multiplying but that they don't put out as much CO2? Bear, other bakers? any
> comments? I might have thought that the lower air pressure might make the
> generated CO2 go further and puff up the bread more.
>
> For many other dishes I guess you can solve things by using a pressure
> cooker, but I guess that doesn't work for baking...
>
> Stefan
> --------
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas
> StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
>
>
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