Notes on Baking at the South Pole (newyorker.com)
66 points by mitchbob 16 hours ago
mitchbob 16 hours ago
joshvm 14 hours 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.
porker 4 hours ago
> It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C.
That sounds ideal for off-the-boil coffee brewing? At sea level I (and all the speciality coffee shops round here) aim for 91C, and I'll drop that to 88-89C for medium roast and lower if it looks on the dark side. Brew methods: Aeropress and cafetiere.
0xbadcafebee 12 hours 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
joshvm 11 hours 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?
We'd definitely have kidney beans in chili and some other dishes, but I got the impression it was a hassle otherwise.
> Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
Friend and I ran a weekly pop-up espresso bar and did a lot of experimenting over the winter. The USAP "house" beans are quite dark, but at least they're roasted within a year or two because coffee is always available and we go through a lot of beans every season. Except the decaf. That stuff is decades old.
People often bring down a big bag from one of the roasters in Christchurch. We personally shipped down a lot of specialty coffee, mostly made V60 and aeropress. The outbuilding where our telescopes live also has a Chemex and an automatic.
cozzyd 9 hours ago
ufo 12 hours ago
Even if soaked, beans still take hours to cook without a pressure cooker.
aziaziazi 11 hours ago
scuff3d 8 hours 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...
xboxnolifes 4 hours 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.
rmunn 5 hours 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 2 hours 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.
socalgal2 14 hours 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.
egl2020 7 hours 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 3 hours 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.
wumms 12 hours ago
Crunchyroll uploaded E01 for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt573QIevIM
unselect5917 8 hours ago
Nice! I'm gonna check it out.
jmclnx 15 hours 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.
codingdave 34 minutes 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.
jcranmer 12 hours 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.)
cozzyd 10 hours ago
Yes, the pressure altitude varies significantly and you can feel the higher altitude days pretty easily...