5 ms·

Notes on Baking at the South Pole

81 points by mitchbob 8mo ago

mitchbob 8mo ago
https://archive.ph/2026.03.07-110624/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-most-beautiful-freezer-in-the-world https://archive.ph/2026.03.07-110624/https://www.newyorker.c...
jmclnx 8mo ago
>At roughly nine thousand three hundred feet above sea level (~2800M) I heard Antarctica on average very high above sea level. So I would think just the thinness of the air would make baking rather hard compared to sea level. Sadly I will not be able go there. 40 years ago, when I when was at around 6000 feet above sea level on a trip, I was getting dizzy when moving around :) Sea level is were I was born and were I will stay.
- jcranmer 8mo ago
  It should be noted that because of the effect of the poles on the atmosphere (the atmosphere is intrinsically thinner near the poles), the surface pressure is even lower, so that it feels like about 11k feet in altitude rather than 9k feet in altitude. (See, e.g. https://brr.fyi/posts/pressure-altitude https://brr.fyi/posts/pressure-altitude.)
  - cozzyd 8mo ago
    Yes, the pressure altitude varies significantly and you can feel the higher altitude days pretty easily...
- codingdave 8mo ago
  Bodies acclimate. You'll go up in altitude one day and get quite sick, then the next day or another day you'll be fine. Spend a week there and you'll feel better. Drink water, stay hydrated, and it will go more smoothly. So unless somebody found something specifically atypical about your body, don't reject all mountains in the world because of one bad day 40 years ago.
  - lproven 8mo ago
    > Bodies acclimate. Absolutely -- and at different rates. I have had severe asthma since puberty. After a decade of suffering, good drugs arrived around the turn of the century, and I've been well controlled since and I've been pretty active. But I am better at altitude. I have narrow obstructed tubes in my lungs. Thinner air flows through them more easily. The higher I am (on land, obviously) the more easily and efficiently I can breathe. In the old days, asthma clinics were located up mountains for this reason. I like spending time at altitude. Thinner air means more oxygen for me, which means I feel better and can be more active. If I could live 3-4 km up all the time, without vast expense in somewhere tiny, I would.
socalgal2 8mo ago
If you've never seen it I highly recommend "A Place Further than the Universe". It's an anime, serious (not a wacky comedy) about 4 high school students who manage to take a trip to Antartica by joining an expedition. One of the best things I've seen in a while. Only 13 episodes so under 4hrs total. Super inspiring and I learned several interesting facts about not just Antartica but what it takes to get there as well. It's on Crunchyroll so if you aren't subscribed, sign up for 1 month for the price of 2 coffees. Watch, then cancel.
- wumms 8mo ago
  Crunchyroll uploaded E01 for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt573QIevIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt573QIevIM
- unselect5917 8mo ago
  Nice! I'm gonna check it out.
- egl2020 8mo ago
  I enjoyed Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World" at many levels, not the least of which was how different it was from "Aguirre, the Wrath of God".
  - kakacik 8mo ago
    Well he didn't have psychopathic Kinski to mess with everything and everybody, throwing childish tantrums over trivial things, did he. I mean the locals during filming offered to Herzog to murder him as a favor, seeing him as an evil spirit... you can't go much further than that. I also recommend ie Dark Glow of the Mountains about Messner and Kammerlander doing properly hardcore expedition on Gasherbrums traverse in Pakistan that was never done before. He interviews them before they depart and after coming back, surviving by series of mere chances in extreme environment, pushed to absolute limits of human bodies and minds. Since I do a bit of mountaineering I can truly appreciate characters and the insights that no hollywood fantasies can ever come close to. True documentaries. A bit controversial sidenote - these are the efforts that I have huge respect for, not doing it for the money, not chasing sponsors with every move. Seeing some world championships or olympics I can't have much respect for those very rich sportsmen who are focusing more on chasing new sponsors than actual spirit of the game.
joshvm 8mo ago
The few times I've baked there, it's been a pretty good experience. There's a full height proving cabinet, yeast works really well at altitude, the ovens have steam injectors, there are good mixers, a commercial fryer. In many ways much easier than baking at home, but probably not a patch on a good bakery. We almost ran out of sugar in 2021 and Rothera sent us a bag of Tate and Lyle in break-glass-in-emerhency box on one of the early transit flights the following summer. That's still hanging in the galley. Cream also goes pretty quickly, and forget about eggs. But you only need "egg product" anyway. The foods that tend to be avoided are pasta and beans, or really anything which has to be boiled. There's a massive pressure cooker but it's a pain to use and clean. It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C. Espresso is fine as its pressurised anyway.
- 0xbadcafebee 8mo ago
  Do they not do soaked beans? Leave them in water for 2 days and they shouldn't need a full boil I wouldn't think? Bonus: chickpea water as an egg substitute in recipes (powdered egg is nasty!). Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
  - ufo 8mo ago
    Even if soaked, beans still take hours to cook without a pressure cooker.
    - aziaziazi 8mo ago
      I depends the beans and their freshness. If soaked and not 2yo+, it’s less than 1 hour for most of them. 30 min is enough for azuki and chickpeas if soaked 48h. There’s other tricks: various beans can be found in the form of instant powder or flaskes (1 min watering - no cooking) semolina (5 min watering - no cooking) and pre steamed (no watering - 10/20 min cooking). I bring those to hike on the mountain and use gaz only to make them hot. Mixed with cereals semolina, spices, herbs and oil/nuts its the perfect submit meal.
scuff3d 8mo ago
"six-day-week, eleven-hour-day, thirteen-dollars-an-hour" WTF? I figured the only way you'd get someone to go up there (who's not a researcher) would be to pay well. Crazy...
- rmunn 8mo ago
  Article says room and board, plus cost of transportation, are covered. So that $13/hr goes quite a bit further than it would if a chunk of it was going towards paying for food and rent. (And if you were paying for the cost of the plane flight, then nobody would take the job). Can't calculate the equivalent compensation without knowing where the author lives normally, but it might (VERY rough guess) be the equivalent of $20 to $25 per hour.
  - Brybry 8mo ago
    Can probably ignore rent savings. In the article the author says she missed her husband, kids, and dog so she still had some of the same costs going on back home. And Wikipedia says she earned a Ph.D. in 2004 and lives in NYC [1] Probably safe to say she didn't go for the money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cree_LeFavour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cree_LeFavour
- xboxnolifes 8mo ago
  With room and board covered, I'd think a lot of people would be willing to go for free just for the adventure of it.
- giraffe_lady 8mo ago
  I knew some people who did it in the 90s and 2000s. At least then it was comparable to other "extreme" cooking jobs like tugboats, oil rigs, mining camps. Reputation was that pay was generally less than those but the setting more interesting and you were less likely to get raped.
- marssaxman 8mo ago
  Are you kidding? It's Antarctica. Rich people will pay a small fortune just to get a glimpse of the place! For the opportunity to spend a season living there, I'd gladly accept a low-paying job. I'd probably do it for free. (Alas, I doubt my life will ever work out in such a way that I'll have that opportunity.)

81 points by mitchbob 8mo ago

https://archive.ph/2026.03.07-110624/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-most-beautiful-freezer-in-the-world https://archive.ph/2026.03.07-110624/https://www.newyorker.c...

jmclnx 8mo ago

>At roughly nine thousand three hundred feet above sea level (~2800M) I heard Antarctica on average very high above sea level. So I would think just the thinness of the air would make baking rather hard compared to sea level. Sadly I will not be able go there. 40 years ago, when I when was at around 6000 feet above sea level on a trip, I was getting dizzy when moving around :) Sea level is were I was born and were I will stay.

jcranmer 8mo ago
It should be noted that because of the effect of the poles on the atmosphere (the atmosphere is intrinsically thinner near the poles), the surface pressure is even lower, so that it feels like about 11k feet in altitude rather than 9k feet in altitude. (See, e.g. https://brr.fyi/posts/pressure-altitude https://brr.fyi/posts/pressure-altitude.)
- cozzyd 8mo ago
  Yes, the pressure altitude varies significantly and you can feel the higher altitude days pretty easily...
codingdave 8mo ago
Bodies acclimate. You'll go up in altitude one day and get quite sick, then the next day or another day you'll be fine. Spend a week there and you'll feel better. Drink water, stay hydrated, and it will go more smoothly. So unless somebody found something specifically atypical about your body, don't reject all mountains in the world because of one bad day 40 years ago.
- lproven 8mo ago
  > Bodies acclimate. Absolutely -- and at different rates. I have had severe asthma since puberty. After a decade of suffering, good drugs arrived around the turn of the century, and I've been well controlled since and I've been pretty active. But I am better at altitude. I have narrow obstructed tubes in my lungs. Thinner air flows through them more easily. The higher I am (on land, obviously) the more easily and efficiently I can breathe. In the old days, asthma clinics were located up mountains for this reason. I like spending time at altitude. Thinner air means more oxygen for me, which means I feel better and can be more active. If I could live 3-4 km up all the time, without vast expense in somewhere tiny, I would.

socalgal2 8mo ago

If you've never seen it I highly recommend "A Place Further than the Universe". It's an anime, serious (not a wacky comedy) about 4 high school students who manage to take a trip to Antartica by joining an expedition. One of the best things I've seen in a while. Only 13 episodes so under 4hrs total. Super inspiring and I learned several interesting facts about not just Antartica but what it takes to get there as well. It's on Crunchyroll so if you aren't subscribed, sign up for 1 month for the price of 2 coffees. Watch, then cancel.

wumms 8mo ago
Crunchyroll uploaded E01 for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt573QIevIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt573QIevIM
unselect5917 8mo ago
Nice! I'm gonna check it out.
egl2020 8mo ago
I enjoyed Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World" at many levels, not the least of which was how different it was from "Aguirre, the Wrath of God".
- kakacik 8mo ago
  Well he didn't have psychopathic Kinski to mess with everything and everybody, throwing childish tantrums over trivial things, did he. I mean the locals during filming offered to Herzog to murder him as a favor, seeing him as an evil spirit... you can't go much further than that. I also recommend ie Dark Glow of the Mountains about Messner and Kammerlander doing properly hardcore expedition on Gasherbrums traverse in Pakistan that was never done before. He interviews them before they depart and after coming back, surviving by series of mere chances in extreme environment, pushed to absolute limits of human bodies and minds. Since I do a bit of mountaineering I can truly appreciate characters and the insights that no hollywood fantasies can ever come close to. True documentaries. A bit controversial sidenote - these are the efforts that I have huge respect for, not doing it for the money, not chasing sponsors with every move. Seeing some world championships or olympics I can't have much respect for those very rich sportsmen who are focusing more on chasing new sponsors than actual spirit of the game.

joshvm 8mo ago

The few times I've baked there, it's been a pretty good experience. There's a full height proving cabinet, yeast works really well at altitude, the ovens have steam injectors, there are good mixers, a commercial fryer. In many ways much easier than baking at home, but probably not a patch on a good bakery. We almost ran out of sugar in 2021 and Rothera sent us a bag of Tate and Lyle in break-glass-in-emerhency box on one of the early transit flights the following summer. That's still hanging in the galley. Cream also goes pretty quickly, and forget about eggs. But you only need "egg product" anyway. The foods that tend to be avoided are pasta and beans, or really anything which has to be boiled. There's a massive pressure cooker but it's a pain to use and clean. It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C. Espresso is fine as its pressurised anyway.

0xbadcafebee 8mo ago
Do they not do soaked beans? Leave them in water for 2 days and they shouldn't need a full boil I wouldn't think? Bonus: chickpea water as an egg substitute in recipes (powdered egg is nasty!). Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
- ufo 8mo ago
  Even if soaked, beans still take hours to cook without a pressure cooker.
  - aziaziazi 8mo ago
    I depends the beans and their freshness. If soaked and not 2yo+, it’s less than 1 hour for most of them. 30 min is enough for azuki and chickpeas if soaked 48h. There’s other tricks: various beans can be found in the form of instant powder or flaskes (1 min watering - no cooking) semolina (5 min watering - no cooking) and pre steamed (no watering - 10/20 min cooking). I bring those to hike on the mountain and use gaz only to make them hot. Mixed with cereals semolina, spices, herbs and oil/nuts its the perfect submit meal.

scuff3d 8mo ago

"six-day-week, eleven-hour-day, thirteen-dollars-an-hour" WTF? I figured the only way you'd get someone to go up there (who's not a researcher) would be to pay well. Crazy...

rmunn 8mo ago
Article says room and board, plus cost of transportation, are covered. So that $13/hr goes quite a bit further than it would if a chunk of it was going towards paying for food and rent. (And if you were paying for the cost of the plane flight, then nobody would take the job). Can't calculate the equivalent compensation without knowing where the author lives normally, but it might (VERY rough guess) be the equivalent of $20 to $25 per hour.
- Brybry 8mo ago
  Can probably ignore rent savings. In the article the author says she missed her husband, kids, and dog so she still had some of the same costs going on back home. And Wikipedia says she earned a Ph.D. in 2004 and lives in NYC [1] Probably safe to say she didn't go for the money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cree_LeFavour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cree_LeFavour
xboxnolifes 8mo ago
With room and board covered, I'd think a lot of people would be willing to go for free just for the adventure of it.
giraffe_lady 8mo ago
I knew some people who did it in the 90s and 2000s. At least then it was comparable to other "extreme" cooking jobs like tugboats, oil rigs, mining camps. Reputation was that pay was generally less than those but the setting more interesting and you were less likely to get raped.
marssaxman 8mo ago
Are you kidding? It's Antarctica. Rich people will pay a small fortune just to get a glimpse of the place! For the opportunity to spend a season living there, I'd gladly accept a low-paying job. I'd probably do it for free. (Alas, I doubt my life will ever work out in such a way that I'll have that opportunity.)