Baking at High Altitudes

With an elevation of about 6,000 feet, San Miguel is considered a "high altitude" when it comes to baking. Not to worry - with a few adjustments, you can have your cake and eat it, too. Here are some tried and true tips:

1. For baked goods in general, reduce the baking powder and baking soda by half, and add a little extra flour, about 1 tablespoon per cup of flour.

2. For cookies, in addition to the adjustments above, reduce the fat slightly. For example, if ½ cup butter is called for, reduce it by 1 tablespoon. This will prevent your cookies from spreading too thinly.

3. If your baked goods are too dry, try reducing the amount of sugar by 1-2 tablespoons per cup and increasing liquids slightly, tablespoon by tablespoon.

4. If your baked goods are still too dry, increase the oven temperature somewhat (15-25º fahrenheit) and reduce baking time by a few minutes.

For repeated baking success, be sure to take notes on what adjustments were made, since these adjustments often vary from recipe to recipe.

Common Baking Equivalents

If you are an American, you've probably been using the Imperial system of measurements (vs. the metric system). Unless you plan to buy all new cookbooks, measuring cups, spoons, etc. when you arrive in Mexico, it's likely that you will continue to cook using the Imperial system, at least for a while.

This works fine with bulk items like flour, sugar and spices, which you can easily measure out with your cups and teaspoons, but requires a little more work when it comes to items that are often measured in sticks (like butter), or cans (like evaporated milk).

A few of the more common ingredients that will need adjusting for quantity are listed in the following table, using typical sizes.

Buen provecho!

Disinfecting Your Produce

Before you can cook all of those delicious fresh fruits and vegetables you've bought, you'll have to wash them with some kind of disinfectant.

Some people soak their produce for 1-5 minutes in a water/ bleach solution (1 tablespoon bleach per gallon of water). Another popular option is to use a microbicida (microbe killer) such as Microdyn or BacDyn, which is made specifically for cleaning produce and can be purchased at the grocery store.

The active ingredient in these products is usually colloidal silver or grapefruit seed extract, both long recognized as safe, natural anti-bacterial agents, and neither have a smell or aftertaste.

The general idea is to let your produce soak for about 15 minutes in a small amount of the disinfectant mixed with water. You’ll want to read the bottle for specific instructions. Then simply drain, dry and enjoy.