Instructions: You are baking not only in a high place - but in a dry place that can have sudden changes in barometric pressure. All these issues impact on how yeasted bread kneads, rises and bakes.

Liquid: people who bake in dry conditions have to compensate for dehydrated ingredients. Flour is hydroscopic: it acts like a sponge. The drier your environment, the drier your flour will be. Dry dough makes dry, uninteresting bread. It is essential to add additional liquid to doughs made in dry climates. Liquid is anything that pours - and anything that melts during the baking - such as cheese. Fresh fruits and vegetables add liquid to dough as it is extracted during the knead cycle. Pureed fruits and vegetables are considered liquids.

The more liquid in a bread (to a certain point) the more interesting, complex and varied the crumb and crust. There is no hard and fast rule about exactly how much extra liquid to add - you have to feel the dough to know. With practice, youll be able to figure out how much liquid to add. Whole wheat and other "dark" flours require more liquid than white flour. Bread machines are great places to knead and proof (rise) slack (wet) doughs. The problem with baking a slack dough in the bread machine is the more often than not the vertical loaf cannot sustain itself and collapses either during or immediately after baking. If you wish to use the bake cycle in the machine you must be much more careful in the amount of additional liquid to add. This will be determined by feel and practice. You will have far more success if you give up the "overnight" or time/delay mode.

Flour: it is essential to use the finest quality flour when making bread - especially at high altitude. When choosing white flour, look for unbleached, unbromated flour that has at least 12 grams of protein per cup. Check the nutritional panel (remember that the measurements are given in 1/4 cups). This amount of protein will give you about the right amount of gluten to form an elastic dough. Whole grain flours (typically lower in protein) should be used in combination with good quality white flour. Adding Lora Brodys Bread Dough Enhancer will give your flour the extra strength required to make a well conditioned, high gluten dough that will perform very well at high altitudes. The Sourdough Enhancer has the same ingredients as the regular Enhancer plus dehydrated sourdough starter for a natural sourdough taste and texture. The Enhancers also have 2 naturally occurring yeast boosters and dough conditioners: ascorbic acid and diastatic malt (made from roasted barley).

Yeast: When yeast feeds on the carbohydrates in the flour, sugar and other ingredients in your dough, the by-product is carbon dioxide. When this carbon dioxide expands in the dough it forms air pockets (sometimes very tiny, sometimes much larger). The expanding gas pushing these air pockets throughout the dough makes the bread rise. The longer and slower this process is, the more complex and sophisticated the taste, and texture of the finished bread, and the happier you will be with the results.

The decreased air pressure in high altitudes means that there is less air pressure pushing back against these air pockets, so the bread rises higher and more rapidly than it should. Typically, the dough will rise way up, then collapse during the baking process since the structure of the bread cannot support the volume of dough. Decreasing the amount of yeast by 1/3 to 1/2 the amount called for in the recipe will certainly help. It is important to use best quality instant active yeast (not rapid rise). I like both Red Star and Saf/Instant.

The other thing that will help is
to allow the dough to have an additional long, slow rise before it is formed and baked. After the first knead and rise, punch down the dough and place it in a large heavy duty zip-lock plastic bag and refrigerate it from 2 - 24 hours. If you are using a bread machine, program for manual and remove the dough after the final cycle. After this time the dough can be formed and given a final rise before baking. If you have a programmable machine like the Zojirushi, you can place the dough back in the bread pan, program for "Final Rise" and the "Bake". Dont allow the dough to over-rise during this last proofing - remember that it will rise more in the oven. Sugar: when making sweet breads it is advisable to cut back on sweeteners (including honey, molasses and maple syrup as well as dried fruits such as raisins) which tenderize the gluten structure and sometime can result in the center of the loaf collapsing. Use 1/4 to 1/3 less than the amount specified in the recipe.

Salt: salt acts as a yeast retardent. Dont bake bread at high altitude without it.

Oven temperature: at altitudes higher than 3500 feet reduce the oven temperature by 25, but keep the baking time the same. Bread is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 190 -200 (use an instant read thermometer). Try to prevent overbaking as this will contribute to dryness.

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