Recipe: Grandma’s Oatmeal Bread
Time: 1:50 p.m.
Weather: Sunny
Temperature: outside 56°F, inside 76.5 F
Humidity: outside 82%, inside 45%
Barometric Pressure: 26.22inHg
Baking Time:
Baking Temperature: 375°F
Customizations: The oven was to be preheated to 375 F, but it takes awhile to up to temperature because I have a pizza stone in the bottom. So, I preheated it to 400 F, put the bread in and set the temperature to 375F.
The bread turned out perfect.
This isn’t exactly baking, but we’ll get to that.
Recipe: Rice Noodles ‘n Chicken
Time: 4:00
Weather: raining
Temperature: 50.5
Barometric Pressure: 26.26
Humidity: 85
Baking Time: x
Baking Temperature: x
Customizations: None
I made two batches today. The first batch was under-cooked I steamed them for about 3 minutes forgetting that things take longer at 4,000 feet.
When I made them a second time, I cooked them for 6 minutes and they were perfect.
I used organic Sunflower oil, the lady said to use vegetable oil (no substitutions), next time I’ll try to find some organic vegetable oil and see if that works better. I noticed when I put the slurry into my pan it wouldn’t spread out the way it was supposed to, so parts of the noodles were thick, and parts of it were thin.
I fried garlic and chicken, added the noodles and medium soy sauce. It really needed some green onion — next time.
From Wikipedia on high altitude cooking.
High altitude cooking is the opposite of pressure cooking in that the boiling point of water is lower at higher altitudes due to the decreased air pressure. This may require an increase in cooking times or temperature and alterations of recipe ingredients. For home cooking, this effect becomes relevant at altitudes above approximately 2000 feet (600 m). At that altitude, water boils at approximately 208ºF (98ºC) and adjustments sometimes need to be made to compensate for the reduced air pressure/water boiling point.
It goes on to say…
A pressure cooker is often used to compensate for the low atmospheric pressure at a very high elevation. Under these circumstances water boils at temperatures significantly below 100 °C (212 °F) and, without the use of a pressure cooker, may leave boiled foods under-cooked.
I did not know that. Well, we will learn as we go.
If you want to try it on your own. For the rice noodles use:
We are at 4,000 feet, and as you can imagine, bread can be more than a little finicky at these altitudes. As can other things. We are going to start with bread, and branch out from there.
I’ve decided to keep a log for the purpose of discovering what part, if any, the weather plays in baking bread, and if we can predict how the finished product will turn out.
We are going to track:
I’m resisting the urge to try to remember from today what the temperature was and all that. This should be a lot of fun and a nice experiment. I just love a good experiment.
I’ll be sharing some recipes, some baking tips and feel free to comment and ask question, we’ll learn together.