"anthony" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> On Mar 15, 1:10 am, "graham" > wrote:
>> "anthony" > wrote in message
>>
>> oups.com...
>>
>> > HI there
>> > I bake in a relatively high altitude of 1000 metres or more than 3000
>> > feet (Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia).
>>
>> I'm at ~1100m (~3600') in Calgary in a very dry climate.
>>
>> > 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
>>
>> That's awfully low - do you mean 240C?
>>
>> > around 35 minutes produced a perfect loaf. I'm using 2 cups of hard
>> > baker's flour to 1.5 cups of mixed-grain.
>>
>> A few years ago, after baking bread for over 25 years, I experienced
>> failure
>> after failure. I decided to go back to basics and got out the baking
>> books
>> and followed a basic recipe to the letter. Result? A perfect loaf.
>> I think that over time, one can become sloppy or experience "recipe
>> drift"
>> (especially if you use cup-measure rather than weighing your
>> ingredients)and
>> it might be worthwhile your going back to first principles. I suggest
>> that
>> you weigh out 500g of bread flour (no additions of other stuff), 325ml
>> (or
>> grams) of water, add 2tsp of salt and use 2tsp of instant yeast (or
>> equivalent). This is a basic recipe for a 65% hydration loaf which
>> should
>> work with hard wheatflour (that's what I'm used to here). If this
>> produces
>> a decent loaf (and it should) you can then start fiddling with the flour
>> proportions.
>> You can also look at:
>> http://planeguy.mine.nu/bread/index....on=faq&page=88
>>
>> If you have any problems with bread, post on alt.bread.recipes where you
>> will get stacks of advice.
>> HTH
>> Graham
>
> OK, thanks Graham; I'll give that a try. By the way, the 140C is
> correct .. anything higher and I bake the outside hard, leaving the
> dough gluggy inside. 140C corresponds to 285 Fahrenheit.
> Cheers
>
Try pre-heating the oven to 230C with a cast iron casserole and lid in the
oven(I use a Le Creuset - without the plastic handle). When the dough is
ready, plop it into the pot and put the lid on. Bake my recipe (or
equivalent) for 30 minutes and then remove the lid and bake for another 15
minutes. I'd be surprised if you don't like the result and it's not gluggy
inside. It's based on the New York Times method of a few months back.
http://tinyurl.com/ys9l9k
or
http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main...8.6 693118205
Some people bake from cold but I've never had good results with that method.
Cheers
Graham