High-Altitude Cake Baking

Because most recipes are developed for use at sea level (including those in The Professional Pastry Chef), when baking cakes––sponge cakes, pan cakes, tea cakes, muffins, and the like––at higher altitudes, where the atmospheric pressure is much lower, you must make some adjustments to produce a satisfactory result (these changes do not apply to baking bread or other yeast items; only those formulas that use a chemical leavening agent). Although some experimental baking has to be done to convert a sea-level recipe to a particular local condition and altitude, certain manufacturers supply the rate of adjustment for some of their products.