“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight…”
I have recently been smitten by the desire to bake bread. (I use a bread machine, so I am no purist – just a lazy baker.) The welcoming smell of the baking bread, the magic when it rises, even the occasional despair when it falls…it all brings out a deeply felt, contented nest-making instinct in me.
I live in Colorado, however, at altitude – 7,200 feet or so. Therefore, baking of any kind is a challenge. My first loaf could have easily served as a lethal projectile instead of food to nourish body and soul. It was, simply, a cannonball made of flour. So, I went in search of help.
This list of handy tips from WikiHow has been invaluable. I’ve added liquid, reduced the amount of flour, reduced the yeast, and added salt. I can now make a reasonably good loaf of white bread, wheat bread, oatmeal bread, and banana bread. (I like substituting our dairy goat’s milk for regular and using maple syrup or honey for water or other liquids, but that’s purely for personal taste. None of it is essential to making a reliably elegant loaf.)
Over the weekend, my father, who was visiting from Alabama, made huckleberry jam. We could not find any tips about jam in a bread machine at altitude. The only guidance was to drop the temperature so many degrees per 100 feet of altitude, which was unhelpful when working with an automatic bread machine, since one cannot manually adjust its temperature.
So, after a first less-than-satisfactory batch, here’s what we did. We cycled our jam ingredients through the machine’s jam cycle twice. Even at high altitude, the huckleberry jam thickened into a sweet, sugary and wonderful treat for the tongue. I served it for breakfast with my homemade oatmeal bread during our first snow of the year – Friday, September 12. (That’s early snow, even for whimsical Colorado.)
Making bread and jam at high altitude in Colorado is a feast for the senses and a challenge for the mind. So, give bread making – and jam making – a try, wherever you are. You’ll be glad. And, check back here for recipes. I plan to publish a few as the autumn progresses.