Baking One Mile High

I love to bake.

Clearly.

Who knew that baking could be so therapeutic and fun?

However, I had an interesting experience the other day while baking for the first time in good ole Colorado.  I decided to bake a batch of foccaccio and pita bread.  It wasn't my first time at the foccaccio rodeo however I had yet to come face to face with the pita.  

PITA

(and now that blogger is stuck on a different font...I swear I'll figure this out one day)

So here's the story of my attempt to make both.  Because the foccaccio has a lot of rising time and the pita does not, it was easy to make the two all in one afternoon.  Yay for wheat products!  And for all you Nellies out there worried about how much bread we may be eating, calm yourself; the pita is whole wheat.  :)  yes that's my rationalization and justification and I'm going with it.

Moving on...

  (back to original font...Blogger, we are going to tangle, my friend)

As you can see, everything was going brilliantly to begin with.  On the right is the foccaccio.  On the left is the yeast and water and sugar for the pita.  I had no worries about this.

YUM!  PITA!

 Here's where the problem was really noticeable.  Above you will notice I have two loaves of foccaccio set into pans.  However, every time in the past, there has been more dough because it rose so much.  I allowed more than enough time for the dough to rise and still, very little action going on.  But I thought, hey it still has some time to rise, maybe it'll magically grow.

 Hmm...Maybe it'll rise in the oven (fingers crossed)?

WOMP WOMP

Nothing.

However, the pita turned out lovely.

Fluffy.  Soft.  A nice brown tint.

I'm very pleased with the pita.  

If only I could figure out what went wrong with the foccaccio.

Later, I will regale you with the photo story of our dinner last night that put to good use the flat foccaccio.

For now, I'm going to blame it on the altitude and not on my amateur status.