Good Ole' (OLD) Bread

Whew! It's been awhile since I've posted. Sorry! January is always a busy month for me in several ways. One of my friends calls it "Hell Month" and I think I can agree with her! I have numerous year-end reports that have to be created and mailed. No one wants to stop their lives and let me concentrate on what I'm doing, so I have to carry on business as usual while still creating and doing the 'Hell Month' reports. But, FINALLY, they are all done and I don't have to think about that for at least another 11 months, so I'm not going to think about it! Yippie!

I did have time yesterday to create my Friendship Bread my good friend Leslie (NO, she's not Amish) gave me a start of 10 days ago. I actually got two bags of the starter, so I ended up with a total of 8 bags now. I made 4 loaves of the bread and gave 2 of the starters away, along with a tasty sample of the melt-in-your-mouth bread.

My good friend Shelley has already posted on her blog about it:

http://whatifitdid.com/?p=2434

I'm not going to include pictures with my post this time, but I will try to next time I make the bread, which will be next Saturday!

Now, supposedly, this 'starter' you have can only be made by the Amish and there is only one type of bread you make with the recipe and that's it. Well...I've done a little research.

It seems most all the recipes I came across are exactly the same. I sort of find that strange as most of the time the same recipe will vary a bit and maybe have 1 cup of something, where another recipe might have 2/3 cup of the same thing! Not with this Amish Friendship Bread. ALL the recipes I looked up were identical!

I did find some variations on the types of bread you could make. There are recipes for Banana Nut, Chocolate, Apple cinnamon, Butterscotch, Mounds Bar, Chocolate Mint, Lemon, Cranberry-Orange, Banana-Chocolate Chip, Cherry, Caramel Apple, Pumpkin Spice, Strawberry, Chocolate Cherry, and Carrot Cake. WoW! There are several.

At the end of the original recipe, it reminds you to keep a starter for yourself and you will be baking every 10 days. Only the Amish know how to create the starter, so if you give them all away, you'll have to wait till someone gives you one back. Well, I also found a way to make the starter. This way you don't have to wait for an Amish person to give it to you or a friend to give to you, you can just create it yourself!

In 10 days I will be baking 12 loaves. I'll make sure to take some pictures to share and also let you know what flavors I create and how good it is! Let me know if you'd like a start of the 'goo', I'll have plenty to share next Saturday!