Amish Friendship Bread
This weekend we have family visiting. My sister-in-law brought me a starting kit for Amish Friendship bread along with the recipe. Apparently this Amish bread is making the rounds in her hometown. I’m vaguely familiar with it but knew that you split your batter and then gave it to your friends. She did bring two loaves that she had made and I have to admit that it is really good bread. It’s a sweet bread that would make a great dessert to be served with coffee.
I recently bought a bread maker, so spending 10 days making one loaf of bread when I can do it in three hours is unappealing. But since I did taste the bread I know that it is worth the trouble. On the 10th day, you add the rest of the ingredients to make your bread. You can find variations on the recipe.
My instructions say that the only way to get a starter is to have one given to you. Well I’m too much of an Internet geek to believe that and found the Amish started recipe online.
You can’t use metal mixing bowls with the recipe and you shouldn’t refrigerate the mixture. There are several days that all you have to do is stir or mash(in a Ziploc bag) the starter. A good idea is to mark on your giveaway starters the date. That way it will be easy for your friends to remember which day they are on in case they lose track.
I can’t wait to break the bread and am tempted to save the other starters to do some bread experiments. I might give a few away but since I’ve been on a bread making kick lately, don’t hold me to it.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
You definitely can refrigerate the starter if you are going to be out of town and can’t find a yeast-baby sitter. I have even frozen the stuff and it will spring right back to life as soon as it defrosts.
Try making pancakes… They are very tasty.
Just Google Amish Friendship pancakes…
We have tried making carrot cake, strawberry bread and the best was chocolate Kahlua cake.