Amish Friendship Bread

November 13, 2017

This is a versatile, fun, sweet bread that is great for giving in the starter or finished form.

If no one has given you a starter, no worries it is easy to start your own. Follow the recipe below. On the daily chart, it will be day one.

If you forget to stir one day or don't add on day 5, it won't ruin the starter. As long as you do stir fairly regularly and feed in once a week it will live.

Amish Friendship Bread

NOTE: Do not refrigerate starter. It is normal for the batter to rise and ferment. If air builds up, let it out (we called this burping). Do not use metal bowl or spoons until you are ready to bake your starter. The fermentation process and metal do not mix.

Day 1: Do nothing.
Day 2: Stir.
Day 3: Stir.
Day 4: Stir.
Day 5: Stir.
Day 6: Add to the bag: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk. Stir.
Day 7: Stir.
Day 8: Stir.
Day 9: Stir.
Day 10: Follow the directions below:

1. Scoop out 1 cup of mixture into a nonmetal bowl and follow the recipe below to bake bread.

2. Add 1 cup flour, 1 sugar, 1 cup milk to the remaining mixture in the bowl. Mix well.

3. Measure out equal portions of 1 cup each into cute plastic containers or Ziploc bags.

4. Keep one of the portions for yourself. I often keep a few portions and bake multiple loaves for the freezer. Consider these portions day 1.

Recipe for baking bread:

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 60 mins

Total time: 1 hour 10 mins

Yields: 2 loaves or 5 mini loaves

Wet Ingredients (mix together in a bowl)

· 1 cup Amish Friendship Bread Starter

· 3 eggs

· 1 cup oil

· ½ cup milk

· 1 teaspoon vanilla
Dry Ingredients (mix together in a bowl)

· 1 cup sugar

· 2 teaspoons cinnamon

· 1½ teaspoon baking powder

· ½ teaspoon salt

· ½ teaspoon baking soda

· 2 cups flour

· 1 box vanilla instant pudding (or pudding flavor of your choice)

· 1 cup nuts, chopped (optional)

· 1 cup raisins (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325° F (165° C).

2. In a large mixing bowl, add wet ingredients. In a separate bowl mix dry ingredients together. Then add the dry to the wet.
3. Grease two large loaf pans.

4. Dust the greased pans with a mixture of ½ cup sugar and ½ teaspoon cinnamon.

5. Pour the batter evenly into loaf or cake pans and sprinkle the remaining cinnamon-sugar mixture on the top.

6. Bake for one hour or until the bread loosens evenly from the sides and a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean.

Options:

Change the flavor by choosing different pudding flavors. Add blueberries or 1 cup of dried fruit, nuts or baking chips of your choice.

I make this in silicone bundt pans for gifts and freeze for quick yummy breakfast coffee cake during the holidays.

Healthy swap outs - ½ cup of oil with ½ cup of applesauce or 1 egg with ¼ cup mashed banana.

Cranberry Orange Friendship Bread: I am currently experimenting with craisins, orange peel and an orange glaze! I used 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp orange extract in the cake, grated orange peel plus chopped craisins, and pecans.

I packaged up portions for a bake sale recently. I used the recipe above and printed the information on two sides of a single sheet.

This is how they looked.