Amish Friendship Bread

Another exciting and tasty adventure of MU. Amish friendship bread was definitely a different baking experience than the prepackaged baking kits you can get at any grocery store.  The idea of the Amish friendship bread is that you cannot start it yourself, but must get the mixture from a friend.  (I'm sure you could buy the starter kit but what's the fun in that?)  So when marissa had received it from one of her family friends, she then passed on to me.  When you receive the starter kit from your friend it should look like this..

a plastic bag filled with mushy stuff that smells slightly like vinegar and alcohol with the date it was started, day 6, and day 10.  You should be getting your bag close to day 1.  You leave the bag out.  Do not refrigerate.  On day 6, you add 1 cup of flour, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup milk.  On all other days, you mush the bag around, giving it some love.  Once you hit day 10, it means the mixture is ready to become bread!  It's slightly inconvenient that you can only make the bread every 10 days and only on day 10 (though i'm not sure what happens if you let it sit too long) but it is so worth it in the end.

Before you starting baking your delicious bread, you want to spread the love and friendship around first right?? Here is how friendship bread is done :)

First you empty the contents of your 10 day-old mixture into a large plastic/glass/ceramic bowl.  (BIG NOTE: you are not supposed to use any metal utensils or bowl. don't know why but all recipes explicitly state it...)  To that smelly bowl you add 1.5 cups of flour, 1.5 cups of sugar, and 1.5 cups of milk. Mix together.  Label 4 gallon-size ziplocks with the current date as day 1, and the subsequent dates of day 6 and day 10.  

Fill each of the bags with 1 cup of the mixture, making sure you try and get as much air out of it as possible.  

Now these 4 bags are ready to distribute to your friends! 

Now preheat the oven to 325 degrees C.  With the remaining mixture in your bowl, add the following: 

3 eggs

1 cup oil

1/3 cup milk

1/2 tsp salt

1.5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup sugar

2 cup flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1 large box (6 serving size) instant vanilla pudding

1/2 tsp vanilla

It does not have to be in any particular order.. just get it all in the bowl and mix it all up.

Grease the bottom and sides of two 9x5in loaf pans.  In a small bowl,  mix 1/2 cup sugar and 1.5 tsp of cinnamon.

Dust the sides and bottom of the pan with half of the cinnamon sugar mixture.

(sorry i only have picture of one of the pans.. you will also notice this pan is made of metal.. oops!)

Split the batter evenly in the 2 pans and then sprinkle them with the remaining cinnamon sugar.

Place them in the oven for approximately 1 hour (until toothpick comes out clean)

Let them cool in the pans until they come out easily.  Slice and enjoy! 

I pretty much ate half a loaf by myself.. my dad eating the other half... it's so good! This was marissa's batch that she had gotten from her friend and I had just stolen a loaf of hers.. so I took one of the 4 bags she made from this batch.  I am currently on day 4 of my bag and if anyone would like to get a bag after the 15th, the day i split and bake my batch (which lucky enough happens to be my mom's birthday! <3) let me know :) It's all about spreading the love and spreading the friendship and eating yummy bread together.