Brief by Allen Best
Food – September 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Many enterprises in Colorado use the expression “High Country,” as in High Country News of Paonia and High Country Bank of Salida. However, they have never specified where “high” begins. Does “high” begin at 5,000 feet, 8,000, or 10,000 feet or more?
A somewhat more empirical way of defining high country comes in the form of a new cookbook called Pie in the Sky: Successful Baking at High Altitudes. Bakers must adjust for the effects of both the thinner air and drier air as elevations rise, and this book offers recipes that take these into account. Doing so, notes The Denver Post, will keep the meringue on lemon pies looking peaked and the apples in pies still apples, and not sauce.
By several definitions offered in the book, the “high country” might begin at 7,000 feet. Below that elevation, crisp cooking apples – Granny Smith – Jonathan, or Rome – can be used for baking pies, says the author, Susan G. Purdy. Above 7,000 feet, she says, soft eating apples like Golden Delicious and McIntosh will bake more quickly and hence more effectively.
Reading all this, one baker who long lived – and baked apple pies – in the Colorado mountain town of Red Cliff says Jonathan’s bake just fine at elevation 8,674 feet, as long as you do everything else right.
Still, if there are quibbles, none can discount Purdy’s methodical approach. She field-tested each recipe at sea level, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000 and 10,000 feet, finding that most one-size-fits-all adaptations just didn’t work.
As for where the high country begins, could it be the point where deer turn into elk?
