The gift that keeps on giving

No, no, not herpes.

Amish Friendship Bread.  Apparently not really associated with the Amish, but the sense of community and sharing and the sweet end products are somethings people associate with the Amish and thus it probably stuck. 

This is a 10-day yeast-based starter that you can use to make a variety of quickbreads. You end up with an excess of starter so people give it away like an e-mail chain letter, but you can end up like the zucchini lady down the street--everyone appreciates the gift of homemade starter at first, but you quickly run out of people to give it to eventually!

But here's how it goes:

On Day 1, you receive a cup of starter from a friend in a big ziploc bag, or you can make it yourself using a recipe, and you let it ferment at room temperature. On each day, you squish the bag around to mix the contents and let out the gases being released by the yeast (the bag will puff up and it will smell sort of like alcohol). On Day 5, you feed the starter with a cup each of flour, sugar, and milk, close the bag again and mush together to combine evenly. Continue mixing once a day, and on Day 10 you feed it again as before and then have your mature starter that you can then share in one-cup portions (you can start 3 new cultures for yourself and friends), and the remaining 1-2 cups that are left for the actual recipe. Don't be fooled by recipes that say "use the remaining one cup of starter for your bread" because 1) you get more like 2 cups remaining, and 2) you really need 2 cups of starter for the batter--even with 2 cups the batter is pretty thick.

If the idea of having more starter than you know what to do with  is daunting (or you don't have any baking-happy friends to share it with), there are two tips I have heard that can be of use: 1) you can freeze the starter and restart it at a more convenient time. I have heard also that you can freeze and then directly use in the bread recipe, which may be true but I haven't tried it myself and don't know if it will work properly. If you do want to bake with starter directly from the freezer, you should use 2 cups at a time. 2) You can scale down your feeding so you only end up with enough to bake with and enough to start another cycle of culture for just yourself. Every loves to eat quickbreads or receive them as gifts, but it's harder to give away a starter for people to take care of!

The possibilities are endless! The basic recipe is a cinnamon-flavored quickbread that is an easy one-bowl recipe and makes two good sized loaves. There are many variations in which all you do to flavor it how you like is to throw in a box of pudding mix, or to throw in some mashed bananas if you like banana bread. Just google it and you will find a lot of variations, even a few savory quickbreads.

My Amish Friendship Bread turned out moist and not-too-sweet with a faint yeasty background taste. While it was baking, the house smelled awesome with cinnamon and yeast. I used whole wheat pastry flour for half of the flour, and I think the whole wheat made it nice and hearty.

I have yet to find a recipe that uses this starter for more normal bread (even yeasted sweet breads like brioche or something..) and I find that kind of odd. Maybe I'll try it in a normal bread recipe sometime in place of the yeast and liquids and see how it turns out.

This easy starter has whetted my appetite for making some more serious bread starters for sourdoughs...it's easier to maintain than I thought! So stay tuned for more yeast starters in the future!