High Altitude Cooking

Why do things bake/cook differently when your at a high altitude? ie Denver

Weeeeell. It's all about the water folks. 
The most important fact is that at sea level water boils at 212F degrees. The higher in altitude you go, the lower the boiling temp gets, so by the time you get to (picking on)Denver water boils at just over 200F degrees. But why? 

The boiling point of water is when atmospheric pressure equals the vapor pressure. Basically, there is less atmospheric pressure at a higher elevation, so less vapor pressure is required. The most obvious example of this is a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers increase the pressure so that the water boils at a higher temperature which decreases the amount of time needed to cook Make sense? Great. We all scientists now.

So what it 'Boils' (are you laughing at my humorous pun yet?) down to:
Lower pressure=slower cooking times
Higher pressure=faster cooking times

Take your lab coats off and put your floral patterned baking aprons back on please. So what does it mean when your cooking something?

Well, your water in your recipe is going to boil out quicker so most of the time adjusting means adding more water and more flour (for structure.) You need water in what your baking to keep things chemically reacting properly. For example, baking powder wont react when there is no water. The other big factor is that you will need to increase your cooking time as well. There are a lot of different ways you can adjust but I'm not going to cover them because i don't want to. Cheers!

Olive: Yeast

Round One,
          Hello people or nobody...The purpose of this blog is stated above, it will be more or less bits of information or at least enough so you (and I) could maybe hold a conversation on the subject and sound reasonably smart. I enjoy how food actually works not just the quick answer but the more scientific approach. So here we go...

      So for my first entry I decided to talk about the roll (pun vigorously intended) that yeast plays in bread. EXCITED YET??
     
      Yeast does a lot of different things in bread but this time we will focus on how it makes bread rise and how it flavors bread.
      Yeast is a very interesting ingredient as it is a living bacteria and reacts to things like any living being does. For example, temperature effects the yeast a lot, when it is too cold it goes dormant, if it gets too hot it dies, but when it is at its favorite temperature (70-90 degrees) it actually grows. This "favorite" temperature is called proofing or fermenting which all yeast bread recipes call for. When it grows it begins to get hungry, its food of choice: sugar! Yeast has the ability to convert the starches that flour has into sugar, if there is not any added sugar in your recipe. A feeding yeast cell gives off carbon dioxide gas, this carbon dioxide creates little pockets in the dough which cause the bread to expand and rise. Like I said though yeast is very effected by temperature so when you bake the dough the yeast dies and the carbon dioxide evaporates leaving behind all of those tiny holes in the bread which is why your baked bread looks like a sponge when you cut it open.

      The flavor in your bread also greatly depends on the development of the yeast. The longer the yeast develops (or ferments) in your bread the more complex, flavorful, and interesting your bread will be. For the same reasons your 65 year old grandfather is probably way more interesting than your 3 year old nephew, things that are older just have more time to become unique, right?  For example, sourdough bread gets its unique flavor from a "culture" usually consisting of flour and usually an acidic fruit juice which ferments and creates a natural form of yeast. This culture is fed by adding flour to it and handled correctly can be cultivated for years, sometimes passed from generation down to generation making the bread a "one-of-a-kind" and quite amazing if you ask me!

      This is a masive topic with endless directions to be talked about, and if your like me these 2 paragraphs didn't answer all your curiosities but i already deleted about 2 pages worth of info and i have to keep it brief so for now thats all you get...

   Next topic: The different kinds milk. How does a cow know when to make 2% or chocolate milk?? Is there an ice cream cow?? I hope so.