I've been making the Tartine country loaf for a few months and it's going great but soon I'm moving to New Mexico and will be at an elevation of 5K feet. I'm rather nervous about how it's going to turn out. My starter is a happy little guy even after having to be refrigerated for a few days or a week at a time so I'm just going to bring that along and continue to use it. I tend to use King Arthur all purpose white flour with either KA or Bob's red mill whole wheat. I've bought small mill whole wheat on line that I've sifted due to its coarseness, but I find the other two are just as good and don't need any sifting to get the same resulting fine meal whole wheat flour.
From what I've read on line, the best bet is to try it out with the existing recipe and watch the results, taking good notes on rise times and oven spring at that altitude. Does anyone have any other tips that might help? I use the recipe as stated in the book and it's the best bread I've ever had - plus I don't get sick from it like I do from commercial breads. If I can't reproduce it I'll be really bummed.
I think what you have read online is good advice. One more thing - in addition to the lower air pressure at 5,000 feet, you may be dealing with much lower humidities, depending on where you are moving from. So your flour will get drier, as will the environment in which you work your dough. So keep an eye on hydration and let the dough tell you if it is wet enough. Good luck with the bread, I'm sure you will soon know what little adjustments need to be made.
I had not considered that at all. Thanks. I generally go by the feel and smell of the dough and starter so I really appreciate knowing this bit before I start. I could see being very frustrated and not realizing that it just needs a bit more water.
Also remember that the boiling point of water is probably below 212F at that altitude (more like around 202F), so if you normally aim for an internal temperature of something over 200F you might not get it! Bread won't get hotter on the inside than the boiling point of water, but can burn on the outside if you bake it too long.
Wow, I did not realize that. I knew about the lower boiling point but not that bread only gets to that temperature as well. Thank.
and usually use bread recipes exactly as written. Cakes and cookies are another matter - I usually have to go with the high altitude adjustments.
A couple things about breadmaking: Lazy Loafer is spot-on about the temperature - my loaves top out at around 200F internally, even after extra long bakes. Also, for years before I discovered higher hydration formulas and no-knead formulas, I used the old-fashioned recipes that said "push-turn-fold until your arm falls off, rise, punch down, rise again, shape, rise, bake." That never worked for me - for some reason the degassing that occurred like that was irreparable and resulted in bricks. Could have been my technique, but when I gave up on the second rise things worked much better.
We were visiting Santa Fe (around 7000 feet) about 3 weeks ago and it seemed kinda humid to me. I'm more used to the dryness of Denver, and my family likes the end product of high hydration doughs better than the low hydration ones. Not sure what the ambient humidity of your new area will be, but you might end up experimenting with hydration levels too.
to New Mexico last year, at 5,500 feet of elevation. The first thing I did was to ask as many people as I could about how they compensate for baking their bread here. Half the people told me they did nothing different, they other half told me that their loaves were completely hit and miss, so I now have no idea what the reality actually is. There are artisan bakers here producing stunning loaves but they are so tight lipped that I could not get any tips from them.
After the move I focused on cookie recipes, because I have never baked them before, and am already producing stunning cookies on a regular basis, without any compensations. Water does boil at a lower temp here and it takes a lot longer to boil, it seems to take me two to three times as long to boil a pot of water here.
I'm in the middle of the desert and find that the humidity has ranged from 9% to 90% (I watch it every day. The humidity in my home (central air/heat) ranges from 35 to 39% throughout the year (I had to get used to not leaving the windows and doors opened like I did when I was at sea level on either coast) so for baking it seems stable enough to bake a consistent product. I dolt know how to measure the humidity of the flour I'm using so thats still a big mystery to me.
Once this cookie and biscuit phase I am in now is under control, I'll get back to baking bread so we shall see how that goes. Keep us approved of your own experiences here, and Welcome! You're just in time for chili season!
Thanks! I'll be in central New Mexico, just south of Albuquerque and it's a tad dry there, but I think I'm going to invest in one of those gauges that shows temp and humidity just to keep an eye on it. Since I'm not a cookie person I'm going to dive straight into the bread and experiment with the hydration. I have never measured the internal temperature of my loaves and I was surprised to hear that people do; I tend to go by the way it smells and the look of things. I'm sure the timing will be a bit different there at 5000 feet so the first couple of bakes I'll probably be overly cautious. I'll let the group know what I find when I get there.
I already went through Hatch and got my first ristra - can't wait to start using those.
started baking yet? Much to my surprise, the humidity here varies from 8% to 75% (I'm probably not that far away from you), as measured by my instruments outside and inside my home. The first year I found that the humidity inside my home was super low, I kept leaving the windows open as I was airing out this new place (paint smell) and was inadvertently drying the environment out. I learned that if I don't leave the windows open (which isn't necessary because we have central heat/AC) that the interior humidity hovers between 35 and 42% even when its only 8% outside.
Many homes around here have swamp coolers so their humidity will be a bit higher.
I expected the winter humidity be even lower because of the use of the heater but this place has a hot water heater with a water to air heat exchanger so there is no gas burning inside the home and the humidity doesn't really drop much, if at all. We do have a humidifier but my wife packed it away because I was experimenting with every day and she thought it was getting swampy in here, LOL.
As for the altitude, I expected nothing bust disasters but have not encountered any problems yet. Just start baking and let us know how your experiments turn out. Have fun!
and the first batch was wonderful, though I did over bake a bit and it was darker than usual. It was huge and tasty with a great crust and excellent crumb. My sister and her husband love it as much as my friends back in SoCal did. This second batch was not as big so it's a little denser but the crust is still excellent and it still makes the mouth water so I'm okay with that. Humidity never crossed my mind and I do monitor that so I'll keep an eye on it. The kitchen temperature was a lot cooler for the smaller batch so I figured that had something to do with it but I was keeping the door open all day so the dogs could run in and out. Tomorrow I'll try keeping the door closed and see if it makes a difference. Thanks for the tip and happy baking.
in checking my Sea Level and high altitude notes, I cannot find any significant difference in my successful recipes. I do control my environmental temperature so It doesn't go above 75 degrees F, nor below 66 degrees F and the humidifier gets turned on when our interior humidity drops below 30%, so I suspect that air pressure does not have much, if any, impact at this altitude (I'm at 5,850 feet).
That sounds great! I don't know why we aren't experiencing altitude problems but I'm glad we are both doing Ok. I keep the doors closed to keep the coyotes and road runners out so my interior temperature is between 73 and 75 degrees year round (I check it twice a day because I don't want temperature variations to mess up my experiments). Have Fun!