Amish Friendship Bread

At work, I was recently given a starter bag of friendship bread. This is a long post so let’s just get to it…These are instructions for when you receive your starter bread bag.

Day 1: Do nothing! You just got your batter starter, so sit back and enjoy your friendship.

Day 2, 3, 4 & 5: Mush the bag for 2 minutes

Day 6: Add to the bag & mush to mix:

• 1 cup Flour
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 cup Milk

Day 7, 8 & 9: Mush the bag for two minutes

Day 10: Time to start baking & sharing! Pour the entire bag into a non-metal bowl and add the following ingredients and mix well:

• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 1 1/2 cups of milk

After the flour, sugar and milk has been added, label four one-gallon ziploc bags with ‘Day One’ and the date and place 1 cup of batter in each bag. These are the starters to share with friends. If you like, keep one for yourself. If you keep one for yourself you’ll be having a fresh loaf of this delicate dessert bread every ten days.

Now preheat the oven to 325°F and add the following ingredients to the remaining batter:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups flour
• 1 large box of instant vanilla pudding

Grease the bottom and sides of two loaf pans (or in my case, I only had one loaf pan so I made some muffins). Dust the side and bottoms of the pans with a mixture of 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. Pour the batter into the pans and sprinkle the remaining sugar & cinnamon mixture on top for nice and crispy tops.

Bake for one hour (until a toothpick comes out clean). Cool until the bread loosens evenly from the pan, turn onto a plate, slice up & serve to your best of friends!

Happy sharing,

Carlene