Helen, we are pretty high up here in north central Pennsylvania, and can be affected by the same sorts of things camp cooks have to watch for in high altitude cooking. The laws of nature just work differently.

Our area must be right on the edge of where it matters, because some people in the valley areas here have done fine on the machines, but the same machine lent to a friend will produce small, dense, ucky loaves. So we decided that we would do better making it the old way when we had three growth-spurting teens in the house. With the store far from home, bread had to be reliable. You can control the variables better with bread made my hand. I imagine the recipes I eventually worked out would not quite work at different altitudes.

BTW, we see other effects in people here from the altitude differences too. Some people just cannot tolerate living on the ridges, and others shudder in the valleys. After living here all their lives, or even just for a few years, people get so they can hardly make themselves drive back up and over and around the two mountains dividing us off from the nearest largish city. The body acclimates to a certain altitude and afer awhile it wants to stay put, for a lot of people.

~S~