CSI: Mountain Edition

Chop and Stir, Inc? 

Up in the hills of Tahoe for two weeks, and we've brought some of the kitchen with us, including the bread making essentials: sourdough starter, flour, lame, and a piece of plywood as our deluxe bread peel.

I've been wondering how the bread baking would be up here. What would happen with the altitude, different water, dry air, different oven? Turns out that its pretty much the same as baking in San Francisco.

Two loaves baked so far, and it's looking really good.

First loaf from Sunday morning (yes, that's snow in the background):

Pretty good, but a little too dense. Things to fix: increase the hydration and increase the second rise by a bit. Yes...that seemed to do the trick.

Here's the bread from the morning's bake:

 

Ahh, that's much better! Much more irregularity in the holes, and more sponginess to the bread. I'm hoping to bake a loaf each day up here, using up all the 12 ounces of extra starter from each daily feed for actual bread.