Taking the Guesswork Out of High Altitude Baking

Having recently moved from a low altitude to a high one, I’ve noticed that baking breads and other baked goods has become a bit more of a challenge. In a lower altitude I was able to make low-fat recipes very easily by adding applesauce in liberal amounts instead of oil or butter. But I’ve found that high altitudes don’t respond the same way, resulting in a flavorless pile of goo. So if you, like me, are wondering if you can ever bake at a high altitude, this is a list of things for you to consider to save you the need to find out the hard way.

Rising

One of the few advantages of high altitudes is that yeast rises far more rapidly than at lower altitudes. In New York, I would have to let a bread dough rise nearly all day to get it to double size, and that’s with two packages of yeast. I first noticed that in the west I could leave my dough to rise for only a half an hour and find it more than doubled in size. This makes baking breads or cooking pizza dough a quicker task altogether, which is nice.

Nevertheless, this is also a disadvantage. When yeast dough rises slowly it has time to build ‘structure’ and a support system, but when it rises quickly it is more likely to rise and collapse while baking because there was less air pressure pushing back the dough as it was rising, causing a ‘lesser’ strength dough; opposition is really a good thing. Sometimes it becomes necessary to decrease the amount of yeast being used, so that it will rise more slowly like it should. If you use the instant active yeast instead of the rapid rising one, you will also greatly help out your finished result. You will have to experiment a little with this if there are no suggested decreases in yeast on the recipe you are using.

Liquids and Sweeteners

You need to add more liquids to any type of yeast baking. High altitudes are drier and therefore the flour you use is drier than at a lower altitude. Because flour acts like a ‘sponge’ in pulling in all liquids you must put more liquid in to compensate. Especially if you are using wheat flour, you will need even more liquids than in just white flour.