High Altitude Cooking in Guanajuato

[NanN]

Thank you, this is super. I will print it and put it with my recipes.

My Christmas cookies all turned out great, as you noted cookies are not so affected by the altitude. My bread is OK, not perfect but OK and I do use a bread maker for the bread. I will make the adjustments you suggest and see if I can get it better than OK.

With cakes I knew what to expect due to altitude so I just went with cake mixes (I know but....) Problem was that I only used two pans instead of the three you suggest and I had an over flow mess. Must look for another round cake pan I suppose.

Frijoles I use a pressure cooker anyway so no worries there. My boyfriend is the rice cooker in the family and he does it in the Persian method where you cook it al dente, drain it, then put it back in the pot with a bit of oil in the bottom, put a cloth around the lit and let it steam until you have a nice crunchy bit on the bottom. We've noticed that it takes longer to get it to the al dente stage up here and the browning/steaming phase takes longer too. Now we know why.

I had wondered why the potatoes and sweet potatoes don't seem to cook properly here when boiled. Didn't occur to me that it might be the altitude. We tried to make mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes a while back and it was a lumpy disaster. They just wouldn't soften up completely no matter how long we boiled them. I shall Google before tomorrow's Christmas dinner to see if I can cook them in the pressure cooker or not.

Once again thank you! And Happy Holidays!