Aha! It’s NOT me…it’s YOU!

As I have been wading through this disastrousness I’ve been dealing with, I finally decided to do a little research. As it turns out, my problem is neither myself, nor my flour! It is in fact the altitude (I’m above 5400 ft)…AND the weather! (if you don't know what I'm talking about read my previous post)

I don’t know why I haven’t noticed before, but I’m assuming it’s related to the changing weather and the fact that I haven’t been a consistent baker. I have noticed that my cookies usually turn out more flat than I would like. And I’ve also gone through a lot of recipes that didn’t turn out as great as the reviews claim them to be; just figuring that I have a different opinion of what’s good or not good.

I’ve always noticed the “high altitude” adjustments on the back of cake mixes and I’ve heard little snippets here and there about altitude affecting baking. But, I’ve never really believed it, and I never realized that it could make such a profound difference.

I remember growing up in California, and the cookies we baked were always so tall and fluffy. I remember baking those exact same cookies in Utah, and being disappointed at their flatness. I never put too much thought into it other than I believed I had a faulty memory of those days when I was small.

This new realization is as equally frustrating as it is relieving. I found an article that explains all about baking at high altitude. There is so much information to sort through that I think my brain may explode. I’m going to have to rethink pretty much everything I know about baking, and start from “scratch”.

I guess it’ll at least fit in with my theme here.

 So…here I go again…

Here’s the article I found:

High-Altitude Baking

It explains all about altitude problems, the science behind it, and gives solutions.

Here’s a general chart that is a good place to start out, when baking at high altitude:

Recipe Adjustment Guide

And here’s where you can find your city’s elevation:

GNIS

(enter your city as Feature Name, select Civil as Feature Class, select your State and County, and click Send Query)

I’ve listed some random Utah Elevations:

Salt Lake City, 4222

Tooele, 4862

Herriman, 4993

Draper, 4747

American Fork, 4632

Elk Ridge, 5423

Orem, 4764

Provo, 4616

Payson, 4747

Richfield, 5351

Cedar City, 5676

While your here, answer my Survey!

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