Amish Friendship Bread

 During high school, this recipe made the rounds with all my friends' moms.  It was called Amish Friendship bread, and it involved this milk, sugar, flour starter that sat on your counter, got fed occasionally, and then got baked into this delicious cinnamon "bread", which really was more of a cake, and inevitably got shared with everyone during whatever events it was that required moms to bake.

Eventually, everyone got tired of feeding their starter and the "bread" disappeared from my life.  But I still remembered it.

Then, magically, during this pandemic, it resurfaced in my Buy Nothing groups (which, if you haven't heard of them, I encourage you to google it and then join your local one).  I got my hands on a starter and I just baked off my first batch this weekend.  It was love all over again.

I had a heck of a hard time finding consistent recipes, so here's me using this blog again for my own record keeping.

Day 1: Do nothing. This is the date that you receive the bag of starter (or the date that you make your own batch of starter / Day 10). Squish the bag.
Day 2: Squish the bag.
Day 3: Squish the bag.
Day 4: Squish the bag.
Day 5: Squish the bag.
Day 6: Add to the bag – 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk.  Squish the bag.
Day 7: Squish the bag.
Day 8: Squish the bag.
Day 9: Squish the bag.
Day 10: Baking/Feeding Day.  Pour the entire contents of the starter bag into a non-metal bowl and add: *1½ cups of flour, 1½ cups of sugar, 1½ cups of milk.  Set aside any starter you will bake with.  Divide the remaining starter into 1 cup portions in separate ziplock bags.


Amish Bread Recipe (Day 10 Baking Instructions)
1 cup starter
3 eggs
½ neutral oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
Optional: 1 large (5 ounce) box vanilla instant pudding mix (just the dry mix)
Topping: 1/4 cup of sugar + 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine the ingredients in the ways normal people combine ingredients for baking.
Top with sugar mix.
Bake at 350F for 50 minutes.

This made two not very tall loaves for me, so next time I will put all of this batter into one loaf pan.  Also this tastes great with berries baked into the middle!

*Note about Day 10: This is what I read online and it seemed like too much stuff.  So I experimented with only giving it 1 cup of each.  Now I'm waiting to see if I've messed up.