Last weekend I totally got hit with a dose of Amish Friendship Bread Chain Letter madness! Have you heard of this before? I hadn’t. My mother in law’s good friend Francis gifted me with a loaf of decadent and very tasty Amish Cinnamon Bread along with a bag of gooey fermenting liquid and directions. First off the bread was sheer madness, totally awesome yummy goodness. It was like really good coffee cake, moist, tasty. Troy inhaled half a loaf in in about 45 minutes.
So the gooey bag is essentially a yeast starter. Each of the first five days you mush the bag. Then on the fifth day (today for me) you add one cup of flour, sugar, and milk. Then you mush for 4 more days. On the 10th day you add more flour, milk and sugar and put four cups of starter into four separate bags (so one cup per bag). With the rest of the starter you make the bread. It makes two loaves of bread so you can eat one and pass one along. The COOLEST part is that you now have 4 bags of starter. So keep one for yourself and pass along the other three to friends. Hence CHAIN LETTER. Except…it’s just bread starter, and nobody dies or has bad luck if you don’t use it.
Although Francis grew up in Amish country I don’t think that Amish Friendship Bread is actually Amish (especially after reading up on Wikipedia about it). It calls for a package of instant Vanilla Pudding, and well, I don’t think the Amish folks are into Jello-O brand products. They are a sort-of “do-it-yourself” kind of people! I found a website that has lots of variations on the recipe, and different ways to use the starter for things like brownies and muffins. Yum!
So, I’m thinking Laura and Hillary? Are you ladies game? Anyone else game? I can overnight it in the mail to you. I’m thinking that we need to come up with some super low calorie, whole grain variations! Something along the lines of Hillary’s Cinnamon Swirl bread, using what I am now calling “Friendship Starter”.
Gaye says:
Ooh, that sounds yummy! Count me in!
I’ve never heard of this, but it sounds really cool!
May 20th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Sonja says:
Sounds good Gaye! Mark June 2nd on your calendar for Chain Letter Baking Day. You will get your starter when I get back from Austin!
May 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Troy says:
The bread/cake/yummy goodness it makes is so very good that to stop eating it would be a crime.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Hillary says:
I’m in! I’m wondering if you use whole wheat flour to add to it if we could just gradually convert it to whole grain Amish yumminess. I’ll have to check my whole grain baking book. It has a whole bunch of sourdough starter recipes so maybe I can figure out a way to build on it from there.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Hillary says:
Okay, here is what my cursory cookbook research has found. I have a several whole grain sweet bread recipes that use an overnight pre-ferment. Not quite what we have here but hear me out. Most of the recipes in this book call for non-fat dry milk because it adds protein without adding moisture. I’m thinking that by using the starter instead of the prescribed pre-ferment, reducing or cutting out the dry milk, maybe reducing the water, and reducing the sugar, we might be able to come up with something pretty yummy. It might not be low cal but it will be whole grain. We can convert the starter to whole wheat simply by using whole wheat flour in place of all-purpose flour. I’m thinking we need to do some experimenting after converting to whole wheat.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Hillary says:
I’m baaaack! Okay, check this link out- http://www.momswhothink.com/bread-recipes/amish-friendship-bread.html
We can totally convert it to whole wheat, might not rise as high but that is okay. Technically, we could substitute applesauce for the oil but I always think that changes the texture, and we should probably only tackle one thing at a time. Really, once you convert it to whole wheat, its pretty okay, and no pudding.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Sonja says:
So, the recipe that Francis gave me with the starter is a little different than the link above but pretty similar. I think in my next batch I am going to try doing half oil, half applesauce instead of full oil, and I am going to cut the sugar in half. I am also going to cut the flour from 2 cups white, to half white, half whole wheat and see how that goes. As for the vanilla pudding, I’m going to keep that in on this batch and maybe take it out later…. I want to keep the moistness! I may sub the milk for low fat buttermilk too…
We’ll see! It will be fun for everyone to try their own variations, and then we can all taste test!
May 20th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
MIshy says:
Ooooh YUM! This sounds so good and it’s such a cool idea too. I’m not quite at a place where I can let such yumminess enter my house on as grand a scale as a starter, but maybe next visit you could just pack along a little slice…
May 21st, 2008 at 5:28 am
Laura says:
So my mom used to make this stuff all the time. She sub’ed 1/2 applesauce for the oil, and we actually liked it a lot better. I think you could sub 1/2 whole wheat for the white without too much trouble too. The applesauce makes it even more moist and yummy. I could eat a whole loaf by myself, I don’t think I’ve made any since college!
May 21st, 2008 at 9:48 am