High Altitude Baking

When I posted my chocolate chip cookie recipe the other day, I mentioned off hand that I live at high altitude. I didn’t think much of it, and only mentioned it because Sara (although she is a superb cook and baker) can never get the chocolate chip cookies right. Conversely, I have a very hard time baking cakes and Sara does not. Now, I’ve been living in Albuquerque for 5 years, during graduate school, which means I haven’t had very much leisure time to think about why neither of us can master each other’s specialties. But then VeganVerve wrote how glad she was that my cookie recipe was for high altitude.

So I finally gave it some thought, and wanted to share with everyone. The reason altitude affects your cooking, and baking in particular, is that the lower air pressure (Albuquerque has about 20% less atmospheric pressure than sea level) allows water to boil at a lower temperature (203 degrees at 5000 feet, compared to 212 degrees at sea level). This means that when you’re boiling potatoes, the water boils faster, but the potatoes are being cooked at a lower temperature, i.e. they have to be cooked longer. If you’re baking, your dough will rise much faster as the water escapes, but won’t set until later, as it needs a longer cooking time. For example, a cake will rise very quickly, and then fall, which is what happens to me. Baked goods will also come out drier.

The solution is to adjust a few different things: amount of moisture, amount of leavening agent and temperature. The quick and dirty way is to leave everything the same except the amount of flour. This is generally what I have done in the past, and it works in that adding more flour to cookie dough will make the cookies spread less, and adding less flour will make them spread more. However, if you’re baking cakes or anything that requires a little more precision for a delicate crumb, you should stick to these rules:

3000-5000 feet: you may or may not need adjustments, depending on the recipe. If you have problems with your cakes falling, try slightly lower adjustments than listed for 5000 feet.

> 5000 feet: increase liquid by 2-3 Tbs per 1 C of flour; decrease sugar by 1-3 Tbs; decrease leavening agent (baking soda or powder) by 15-25%; increase temperature by 20 degrees

> 7000 feet: increase liquid by 3-4 Tbs per 1 C of flour; decrease sugar by 1-3 Tbs; decrease leavening agent (baking soda or powder) by 25% or more; increase temperature by 20 degree

It’s funny that I finally thought about these things 1 week before I’m moving back to sea level :). But now I know why when Sara visited me here, she would put the water at a simmer to cook noodles, but I would leave it at a rapid boil. Both of us had adapted our cooking to our environments, without realizing it!