Sweet Kate

This is the way I make my friendship bread . . . (for Angel and Charis, who wanted to know)


Amish Friendship Bread

Do NOT use any type of metal spoon or bowl for the mixing
Do NOT refrigerate the starter, even after day 6 when you add milk

Day 1: Do nothing
Day 2: mash the bag
Day 3: mash the bag
Day 4: mash the bag
Day 5: mash the bag
Day 6: add to the bag: 1 cup flour - 1 cup sugar - 1 cup milk . . . mash the bag
Day 7: mash the bag
Day 8: mash the bag
Day 9: mash the bag
Day 10: do the following:

- Pour entire contents of the bag into a NON-Metal bowl and add:
1 1/2 cups flour - 1 1/2 cups sugar - 1 1/2 cups milk
- measure out four batters of 1 cup each into four one-gallon Ziploc bags. Keep one starter for yourself, and give three to friends along with a copy of this recipe. Write "Day 1" on the outside of the ziploc bags with that days date.

NOTE: If you keep a starter for yourself, you will be baking every 10 days. Remember . . . Do not refrigerate or freeze the starter. Also, once you give it all away that's it, unless someone gives you a bag of starter again.

Baking Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

To the remaining batter in the bowl, add the following:
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 cup oil
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1 cup sugar
2 cups Flour
2 tsp Cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
1 large box vanilla instant pudding (5.1 oz box)

Grease 2 large loaf pans (ok to use metal) or 1 large and 2 small loaf pans.

In a different bowl, mix an additional 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Dust the greased pans with the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Pour batter evenly into pans. Sprinkle remaining cinnamon/sugar mixture on top.

Bake 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool until bread loosens evenly from the sides of the pan.


*Kate's Notes* This recipe requires that you use a starter, and I'm pretty sure that the starter recipe I posted last year should work, but I've never tried it myself.

If you get tired of making friendship bread every two weeks, you can either give away all your starters, or make basically a double batch. This makes a *lot* of bread. One batch is six small or two large loaf pans, a double batch is twelve small or four large loaf pans.

I usually add more cinnamon to the cinnamon sugar mix to coat the pans - about 1 rounded teaspoon to 1/2 cup sugar.

I do a two week instead of a ten day rotation, adding the flour, sugar and milk on day seven and then baking on day fourteen, but one of the great things about friendship bread is that it is fairly flexible, so you can go anywhere from a ten to a fourteen day rotation depending on when you want to bake.

You can add anything you like to friendship bread, and it will be terrific (just remember that it's a sweet / desert bread). I've added chocolate chips, craisins, carrots and craisins, butterscotch chips, pineapple, fruit cocktail, apple with extra cinnamon cloves and ginger, and pumpkin with chocolate chips. With pretty much all of those I just add about half to three fourths a cup of the chocolate chips / pineapple / apple to the small loaf pan, sprinkling it on top. It will sink to the bottom anyway. For things like carrots or extra spices, I mix it into the batter before pouring into the loaf pan (about 3/4 cup of batter to one small loaf pan).

Well, the friendship bread has come 'round again, and after two weeks, I have lovely loaves of friendship bread in the oven. This batch is lovely and yeasty. I love the smell of yeast.

I have found that I am impatient. I am used to the instant nature of email, of the microwave, of transportation and so on. Well, perhaps not instant, but it is all very fast. But I didn't realize this until a few months ago when I made two batches of friendship bread.

If you do not know what friendship bread is, I shall give a short explanation. It is a sweet bread, made in small loaves, and is thick and moist (and very delicious). It is the type of bread that you can throw in dried cranberries, or chocolate chips, or toffee bits, and it will always turn out wonderful. But this marvelous bread takes two weeks to make.

Two weeks.

The first week or so you do nothing much besides mix the dough every day, and smell the wonderful yeasty scent drifting through the kitchen. Then you add various things, and for another week you watch the dough rise and mix it every day. Finally, after two weeks of smelling the dough, you bake the bread, and it is a wondrous thing. The question then becomes whether to make all the dough into bread, or save some for another two week process.

I do not have much of a point, except to say that in many ways I prefer to make cookies, which only take an hour, to friendship bread. I am impatient. Even when I really want friendship bread, it is much quicker to whip up a batch of cookies instead. I am fine with waiting, up to a point. I will patiently wait for cookies, even though it is an hour later, but two weeks seems so long.

I have been wondering at this as I wait to hear back from grad schools. I was patient to a point, but now I want to hear back this moment. I want to have patience without all the bother of waiting. I am, in a contradictory manner, impatient to learn patience. I surely cannot blame society for my vices, yet I think modern western society is in many ways opposed to patience. Buy it now. No waiting. Get a degree faster. Save more now. But many good things by their very nature take longer.

Please don't misunderstand me; I like microwaves, fast food, and instant messages. Not everything is better faster, though. Some things are better faster, and some things (such as microwave popcorn) are nearly as good, but some things (like friendship bread) take longer. I worry that this society assumes that microwave popcorn is essentially superior to friendship bread only because it is faster. I worry that this society is losing many good things that need patience, or time, like Dickens or virtues. And so I shall wait, trying to learn patience, and pondering the mystery that is friendship bread.