High Altitude Baking Tips

By stancec44

Ingredients

• Stuff for baking

Preparation

Step 1

Because air pressure decreases as the elevation increases, many foods respond differently at high altitudes — and not just baked goods, but beans, stews, fried foods, pasta, etc. There are some standard adjustments you can make, but you also have to experiment a bit to find what adjustments work best for your recipes where you are.

With less air pressure weighing them down, leavening agents tend to work too quickly at higher altitudes, so by the time the food is cooked, most of the gasses have escaped, producing a cake or cookies that have fallen. Following are some suggestions you can use to avoid baked goods disasters!

As your elevation increases you need to decrease the leavening and sugar a little bit more and increase the liquid. You will want to experiment to find the amounts that are right for your altitude. It just takes a little trial and error and your baked goods will be beautiful. Watch them as they make bake faster at higher altitudes especially as it’s suggested that you raise the baking temp.

Cookies
Add 1 Tbsp of extra flour to the amount called for; decrease the sugar slightly, and use 3/4 the amount of the leavening (baking powder or baking soda) called for in the recipe.

For both cakes and cookies, raise the oven temperature by 10-20° to set the batter before the cells formed by the leavening gas expand too much, causing the cake or cookies to fall
Shorten the baking time slightly to avoid over baking at the higher temperature; from my experience that can often be as much as 10-15 minutes; so check early and often until your test pick comes out clean.

Cakes
3,000 ft to 5,000 ft.
reduce the baking powder or soda by 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon for each teaspoon specified in the original recipe.
Decrease the sugar 1 to 2 Tbsp per cup of sugar in the original recipe.
Increase the liquid 2 to 3 Tbsp for each cup specified in the original recipe.

For both cakes and cookies, raise the oven temperature by 10-20° to set the batter before the cells formed by the leavening gas expand too much, causing the cake or cookies to fall
Shorten the baking time slightly to avoid over baking at the higher temperature; from my experience that can often be as much as 10-15 minutes; so check early and often until your test pick comes out clean.

Breads
You need to decrease yeast, sugar and raise time a bit when baking bread at high altitudes. This may take some practice to get it just right for your neck of the woods!
I will typically halve the required yeast, less the sugar by a Tablespoon or two depending on how much is in the recipe and add just a pinch of salt as salt retards the development of yeast.

Watch to make sure your dough just doubles; it will take less time than most recipes indicate. Because of less air pressure, it can more easily rise too much and not hold up to baking without collapsing and resulting in tough and dense bread.