Читать книгу Sugar High - Nicole Hampton - Страница 12

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As someone who grew up in a high-altitude area, I always thought baking was harder than it really is. I constantly wondered how people were ever making homemade cakes work. I always heard people saying that baking is a science, and, of course, that’s true. But no matter how strictly I measured or how carefully I let my eggs come to room temperature, good things were just not happening.

Why are things so painfully different at high altitude? And how can you fix it? This book will give you the answers and show you how to bake things you actually want to eat on a regular basis. (I will refuse all responsibility for any weight gain due to the improvement of your baking skills.)

WHAT YOU MIGHT BE EXPERIENCING

While different types of baked goods have a different set of difficulties at altitude, there are some common things you might be seeing: • Cakes or cupcakes that look perfect while baking, but immediately sink in the center after they come out of the oven.

• Overly airy cakes and cupcakes that have large holes throughout.

• Cakes that are extremely dense, and taste and smell very eggy.

• Dense batters that take forever to bake through, resulting in an overcooked exterior and a raw center.

• Baked goods that have less flavor than you expect, even though you add salt, and vanilla, and other should-be-delicious things to flippin’everything.

• Yeast breads that seem to fail for, like, every single reason.

• Making all of these problems worse, your normal baking solutions and fix-its don’t seem to have the desired effect on your baking.

You guys, I have been there. But we’re gonna fix it together.

COMMON MYTHS ABOUT HIGH-ALTITUDE BAKING


Honestly, I always felt like the resources for this were so limited. For a really long time, my best guess as to what to do was to add more flour to literally everything. Turns out, that’s not how it works. Let’s start with some misconceptions about baking at a high altitude: • Adding flour solves everything: Adding flour is my go-to fix for cake issues, and it certainly does help with certain recipes. However, liquid actually evaporates more quickly at higher altitudes, which means that, in some cases, all adding flour will do is simply dry out your dish. Depending on what you’re baking, additional eggs, reduced sugar, or reduced leavening could be your solution, not extra flour.

• Cookies are affected as much as anything else: This is not an all-encompassing statement, but for the most part, cookies are less affected by altitude than other baked goods. I try most cookie recipes without any modifications first, or I might reduce the leavening as a first step. If you reduce leavening in any recipe, start with reducing it by 1⁄8 teaspoon for every 1 teaspoon of the leavening agent called for.

HIGH-ALTITUDE BAKING TIPS

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HIGH-ALTITUDE BAKING TIPS

Sugar High

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