Amish Friendship Bread

[patsher]

Here a while back someone was talking about Amish Friendship Bread, and the starter for it. It's not true that only the Amish can make the starter. Here are the directions. Remember, DO NOT REFRIGERATE at any time!

Amish Friendship Bread Starter

1 pkg active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup warm milk

Put the yeast and warm water into a cup and let it soften for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the flour and sugar in a non-metal bowl. Then, using a non-metal spoon, slowly stir the warm milk and softened yeast into the flour/sugar mixture. Mixture will become bubbly. Cover loosely and let stand on countertop. This is Day 1.

Day 2: pour the batter into a gallon zip lock bag, mash the bag and let stand.
Day 3, 4, and 5: Mash the bag once a day. If air pressure fills the bag, let the pressure out, and reseal.
Day 6: Add 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 cup of milk. Mash the bag.
Days 7, 8, and 9: Mash the bag.

Day 10: Pour the entire contents of the bag into a non-metal bowl, add 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 cups sugar, and 1.5 cups milk, and stir and using non-metal spoons. Now we divide the starter, share some, keep some, and make some bread. This is Day 1 of the new starter.

Measure out 1 cup of batter each into three one-gallon zip lock bags. This is Day 1 of the starter. Give 3 bags away to friends with a copy of the recipe. They will leave the starter alone for Day 1.

To the remaining cup of batter, add the following and mix thoroughly with non-metal spoons:

Amish Friendship Bread

1 cup starter
3 eggs
1 cup oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
1 box instant vanilla pudding mix

Grease 1 large loaf pans. In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup sugar and 1.5 tsp cinnamon. Dust the greased pans with half the mixture. Pour batter evenly into the two pans, and sprinkle the top with the remaining sugar and cinnamon mixture.

Bake 1 hour at 325 F or until bread pulls away from sides of pan.

This bread is really excellent! It's a sweet bread, as you can see from the recipe. My husband is diabetic, so I have also made it (successfully) using less sugar than it calls for above. I'm going to try it with Splenda one of these days.

Of course, the starter can be used for making other things too, like pancakes. This bread freezes well, so you could make bread several loaves of bread and freeze them. Also, you can find recipes on the internet for other flavors of this bread, and, you can add nuts and/or fruit with wonderful results. (We had a lot of bing cherries left over one year, and pitted/froze them. They are soggy upon defrosting, but make a scrumptious addition to this bread)!

[Spawn-Inc]

I can vouch for the bread and making starters. It's very good bread, more like pound cake though. The best with chocolate chips or chunks.

Make it now!

[w5pv]

For diebetics try Stevia some more ecpensive than splenda but a natural sweeter that doesn't bother blood sugar.You can find it at most health food stores.

[Wayne Smith]

Stevia alone adds a bitterness. In this bread that might be an advantage. I'm diabetic too. We tend to use it 50% with sugar. You use about 1/10 of the combination to the usual amount of sugar! I don't notice the bitterness this way except when making liqueur. For that I usually use honey.

[patsher]

Thanks for the heads-up about Stevia. I WILL try that!

[Gliden07]

This is a really good Bread!! My Girlfriend made it for me for about a month but I can only eat so much of it!! LOL!!! Very good though!!