Amish Friendship Bread

[signseeker]

Finally made some Amish friendship bread today. (You have to wait 10 days from the time you get the "start" from someone else.) It's deee-licious!! :l0 (2):

So, here's my dilemma. I don't want to keep giving so much of it away. See, you add stuff after a while and then divide into 5 parts - one to bake, one to keep yourself to start over and 4 to give to your friends.

Is there a way to tweak the recipe so I can bake everything except keep the one "start" for myself?

I'd like to keep this going all summer/fall if I can... we love it. It's almost like a sourdough thing cuz you don't need yeast, huh?

Also, can you tweak the recipe to add applesauce in place of the oil? We're going to have lots of apples, I think, and I want to make applesauce for baking...

[signseeker]

Here's the original recipe...



Amish Friendship Bread




Day 1 . . . . . . . . Do nothing.
Day 2 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air.
Day 3 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air.
Day 4 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air.
Day 5 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air.
Day 6 . . . . . . . . Add 1 C flour, 1 C sugar and 1 C milk.
Squish together and let out excess air.
Day 7 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air twice a day.
Day 8 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air twice a day.
Day 9 . . . . . . . . Squish dough inside bag and let out excess air twice a day.
Day 10 . . . . . . . Squeeze out dough into large non-metal bowl.
Add 1 ? C flour, 1 ? C sugar, 1 ? C milk.
Mix with non-metal spoon. Pour 1 C portions into 4 separate
Ziploc bags and mark with date. Keep one for yourself and
give other three to friends along with instructions.




You will have about 1 C of dough left in your bowl. Mix in:
1 C oil
? C milk
3 eggs
? tsp vanilla


In a separate bowl, mix together:
2 C flour
1 C sugar
1 ? tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
? tsp salt
1 box (5.1oz) instant vanilla pudding


Slowly add dry ingredients to dough and mix together.
Pour batter into greased and floured loaf pans (about 2 medium or 5 small).
Mix ? C sugar and ? tsp cinnamon and sprinkle on top of batter.
Bake at 325* for 55-60 min. depending on loaf size or until toothpick comes out clean.




*Try adding different flavors of pudding or extra mix-in's like chocolate
chips, nuts, raisins, craisins, coconut, etc. You may omit cinnamon
if trying out other variations.

[Earthling]

I would half all the amounts you add to the bread so it would make 3 loaves. With sourdough you add as much flour & water as you want to make the amount you want so it is the same principle. Then you would end up with 3 loaves - 1 to keep for the start and 2 to bake. Who wants to bake only one loaf with a family? Let me know how that works. It is a good recipe.

[signseeker]

Okay... I'll try that.

Do you know how to make the very first "start" or whatever you call it?


WAIT- So you're saying when I first squeeze it out into the bowl, from the baggie, I add 1/2 THOSE ingredients and go from there? Or half the other ingredients, like the eggs and all that...?? :001_ssuprised:

[Earthling]

On day 6 & 10 - half those ingredients. The other recipe instructions pertain to each 1 cup of start so make a loaf of the bread per the instructions for every 1 cup of start. Make sense? I am a little confused as the directions should have you end up with about 8 1/2 cups of start according to the amount of ingredients added - not 4 cups.

I have a really good sourdough start that is over 150 years old . I don't know how to make this Amish one from scratch. Most sourdoughs are better the older they are, therefore new ones you make yourself are fairly bland.

[signseeker]

Whoa! 150 years old? There is just something amazingly cool about that. :thumbsup:

[Earthling]

Whoa! 150 years old? There is just something amazingly cool about that. :thumbsup:

We think so but have nauseated a few people while they "were" enjoying their sourdough bread when they realized they were eating 150 year old "bacteria". :l0 (59): Reminds me of when my SIL quit eating chicken after going to a barnyard with the school kids . . . :smilielol5:

[signseeker]

I wonder if you could just start this with a cup each of milk, sugar and flour and stick it in a baggie...??

I wonder what would happen if you used "raw" milk?

[signseeker]

Okay, today's baking day for the Amish bread.

Another "bonus" :rolleyes: is that I didn't get the other 3 bags given away - I forgot to bring them to the family baptism -- blah blah -- anyway, I've got four bags, which would translate into 8+ loaves if I half it!!

So... I think I'll try something... actually 8 loaves wouldn't be that much. I could keep one, freeze one, give out 3 to my visiting teachee's, one to Mom, one to Mom's best friend and one for my widow neighbor who's so totally awesome. That's eight! :thumbsup:

I'm going to try to get the routine down to where I bake 4 loaves and keep one start going... bake four loaves, keep one start going... bake four loaves, keep one start going... I've had to add boxes of vanilla pudding to the storage and make sure I have lots of cinnamon stored, too.

I wonder how pre-electricity people got eggs over the winter? When they couldn't give the hens extra light? Maybe just did without eggs for a few months? Maybe that's where the "eating meat" thing came in, cuz you couldn't bake as much with no eggs?

[Earthling]

Sign I'd like one of your starts if you ever go into Salt Lake or Ogden or tell your husband you are meeting me when you go to the next GLO party. DH works in SL too. I loaded up on the pudding mix on Macey's sale a month ago so I'm ready to go!

I have an idea for a GLO party - let's do dutch oven! Good skill to know. I bet I can get my friend who won the world championship a few years ago to come and give us hints - great lady.

[signseeker]

Okay, the "world champion dutch oven cooker" --- isn't that like, Utah? I mean seriously, who goes to that? And now! All the way from Siberia! We have Ivan Ivanovich with his Woolly Mammoth stew! :smilielol5:

I'll feel better when I get this batch baked and maybe one more batch since I've monkeyed with the recipe... but I'd be glad to give you a start.

[Earthling]

Okay, the "world champion dutch oven cooker" --- isn't that like, Utah?

No - the cookoff has become big stuff. It is held during the Sportsman's Expo in Salt Lake in March and has contestants from all over the world. I used to cover it when I wrote the food section of the paper - got to taste the food and the whole deal. You can't believe the incredible food they make! It definitely isn't stew and dump cake or cobbler. Last time I went to it they had a group from Japan competing.

[signseeker]

Hey, don't be dissin' on Dump Cake, okay?? :frown2: That stuff rocks!

I decided to make one batch yesterday. Turned out swell. As I was sitting there thinking, I wondered why I poured the dough into the bowl and then scooped it back out into new bags to give away... instead, I just took the bags, crossed off the original date and replaced it with "4-6-09" and set it back on the counter. I mean, why be tied down by the Day 6 and Day 10 thing?

So today I'm going to make another batch. Maybe tomorrow I'll make the third batch and I'll still have one that I'll follow the "Day 6/Day 10" plan with. :thumbup:

[Earthling]

I predict you are going to get awful sick of this stuff soon . . .

Hey I like dump cake, stew & cobbler . . . just pointing out that these guys cook "gourmet" in those dutch ovens!

check out this Deseret News article on the championship complete with some recipes:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705291494,00.html