Amish Friendship Bread !

Amish Friendship Bread is a type of bread designed to be baked and sent along in a manner similar to a chain letter. The idea is very simple: a friend gives you a cup of yeast culture (also known as "starter") and a copy of instructions. Following the instructions, you add sugar, flour and milk and it rises. Eventually, you end up with 4 cups of the starter. You use one cup to make bread (the instructions provide you with the recipe), keep one cup to start a new cycle and give two cups to your friends. Each of your friends also gets a copy of the instructions for what to do with the yeast starter. The latter part makes it somewhat like a chain letter.



The first time "Amish Friendship Bread" was discussed on Usenet was in a posting on February 5, 1990. The results yielding from a traditional Amish Friendship Bread recipe is a sweet quickbread with a taste and crumb very similar to a cake. The starter, however, may be used to make lots of different types of bread.



DAY 1 This is the day you receive the starter. It is never refrigerated, just left on the kitchen counter.

DAY 2, 3, 4, 5 Mash the bag to mix up the contents.

DAY 6 Feed the starter: Add 1 Cup all-purpose Flour, 1 Cup Sugar and 1 Cup Milk to the bag. Squeeze the bag a few times.

DAY 7-9 Mash the bag to mix up the contents.

DAY 10 Place starter in a bowl. Add 1 1/2 Cup flour, 1 1/2 Cup sugar and 1 1/2 Cup milk and mix well. Now place 1 cup starter into each plastic bags you want to send your friend, and use the remaining to make 1 loaf of bread.

The starter was sent to me by a dear friend and fellow blogger Swapna of Swad.
I made a simple coconut and walnut bread out of this starter. I don't like my bread to be too sweet, so reduced the amount of sugar.



Making of the Bread

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup oil
2-3 tbsp sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sweetened coconut flakes
3 tbsp chopped walnuts



Preparation

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
To one cup starter add all the dry ingredients like flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder and fold together.
To this add the wet ingredients and mix well. At last fold in the coconut flakes and walnuts.
Bake for 1 hour and insert a dry knife to see it come out clean.
Let it cool. The bread tastes great.



I passed 2 cups of starter to Susan and Sig in the blog sphere. The 3rd cup was passed to one of my friend Neitha.