HI there
I bake in a relatively high altitude of 1000 metres or more than 3000
feet (Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia).
It took me some adjustment to cope with the higher altitude than I was
used to, but I finally found that baking at 140 degrees Celsius for
around 35 minutes produced a perfect loaf. I'm using 2 cups of hard
baker's flour to 1.5 cups of mixed-grain.
The air up here is usually dry but for the past month we've had
unusually high humidity. Would that explain why, all of a sudden, my
bread rises by only half to two-thirds its normal volume on its second
rising .. and doesn't improve at all during the baking. I'm getting
bread which is almost half its normal height. It was gluggier than
normal also, till I dropped the baking temp down 10 degrees to 130
degrees Celsius.
Is there a way to compensate for this? I guess the situation isn't
helped by the fact that Australia is only now starting to recover from
a prolonged drought which has, reports suggest, led to production of
flour with less than normal levels of protein.