The Anti-Friendship Bread

Do you remember Amish Friendship bread growing up? I remember nursing and caring for those Ziploc baggies filled with fermented batter a couple times during my youth. I never fully understood the process, but the final product was delicious. Recently, my roommate came into possession of 4 Friendship bread starters. So, we tenderly cared for the batter for ten days, "mushing" it everyday, adding more ingredients and even toting the baggies to Kansas City for a weekend lest it be alone. Needless to say, after our dedicated commitment to assuring the dough reached its total potential we were more than excited to bake the final loaves. If only we knew how this Friendship bread would torture us.

We began by taking 2 bags and emptying them into a large bowl. To the starter we added more flour, sugar and milk. We then separated 1 cup of the batter to be saved and passed on to others. We proceeded to use the remaining batter to mix the dough. That's where we went very wrong. We should have portioned out 4 cups into individual bags and saved only 1 cup to create the dough from. We failed to properly read the directions. Yes, we are both seniors in college.

Because our dough was so disproportionately wet, we panned 6 loaves instead of 4. We didn't fully recognize our mistake until the pans were already in the oven. Fail. After a brief period of mourning and feeling of defeat we decided to allow them to bake regardless. The failed loaves actually ended up tasty, but slightly burnt on top. Between three of us, we didn't have much difficulty eating the good parts though.

Fail bread

After a brief grieving period for the loaves we lost, we regrouped, remixed and re-baked. Our final product was three loaves. Now, we originally began with 4 bags of starter batter. From those 4 bags we should have portioned out 5 new batters equaling 20 starters. Each starter makes 2 loaves. All totalled we would have made 40 loaves of friendship bread. Ultimately, it was for the best that we didn't bake 40 loaves of bread. We didn't have the ingredients nor need for 40 loaves of friendship bread.

After this experience, friendship bread and I are no longer on speaking terms.