Friendship Bread

Cafe Society
1

I remember making this wonderful bread in high school and it was so easy, but I lost those instructions long ago :frowning: . Recently, I did a web search for friendship bread recipes and almost all of them did not want you to refridgerate the batter :eek: . The ones that did allow for you to refridgerate the batter, seemed like a catch-22 where you would reduce the recipe to give it away, but you never seemed to get to the actual “bake” stage :confused: .

Like a moron, I went ahead and tried the unrefridgerated method. For my trouble, I ended up with a very smelly Ziploc that began leaking its rancid contents onto my counter. I do not want to give unending amounts of batter-filled Ziploc bags to everyone I know, I just want to make a loaf or two of friendship bread :slight_smile: . Please help.

2

Food threads seem to work better in Cafe Society so I’ve moved it there.

samclem GQ moderator

3

I don’t have loads of experience with sourdoughs, but shouldn’t it be left open to the air or just covered with a cloth? Maybe that was the problem.

4

Well, the issue with leaving it out is that it takes 10 days. The recipe I made in high school said nothing about not refridgerating, but you had to stir each day, add new ingredients each few days, etc. I just refridgerated and made my bread and it was awesome good!

5

Synchronicity! I made this bread yesterday. My starter was in a ZipLoc bag for 10 days. I mushed and burped the bag every day, and added flour, milk, and sugar on day 6 – baked on day 10.

I couldn’t find three people who wanted to share the starter. I thought about reducing the amount of flour, sugar, and milk and using less of the starter, but I didn’t know if that would work. So I just followed the directions and I dumped the extra batter. I wasted some flour, sugar, and milk though.

If you don’t mind wasting flour, sugar, and milk, here’s what you do with your batter:

Use a glass or plastic bowl and mixing spoons, no metal.

Assuming you’re at day 10:

Add 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 cups sugar, and 1.5 cups milk to your starter batter and mix it up. This is your basic batter that you’re supposed to divide and share with friends. You’ll need 2 cups to make your own bread.

Put the 2 cups of the batter in a bowl, and add:

3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 large size box instant vanilla pudding
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt

Mix that up. Pour it into 2 loaf pans. The loaf pans should be greased and dusted with a sugar-cinnamon mixture. Bake at 325 for about an hour. Toothpick test for doneness.

Cool in the pans, and the loaves should come out easily.

I think you could refrigerate the extra batter. If you do, take it out of the fridge 10 days before you’re ready to bake. Put a cup of batter into a gallon ZipLoc bag. Mush it every day for 5 days. Add 1 c. each flour, sugar, and milk on day 6. Mush for 4 more days. Then do it all over again.

I didn’t like the bread that much. Too sweet.

6

So what do you actually start with, assuming you don’t have any starter to start with?

7

I have no idea. My printed recipe says: “Only the Amish know how to make the starter, so if you give them all away, you will not be able to start more.” My friend got the starter on a visit to the Amana Colonies here in Iowa.

Maybe it’s just a basic sourdough starter.

ETA: Flour and water, apparently (yeast optional). Here’s a link: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm

8

You can buy sourdough starter yeast in it’s dormant form, in larger grocery stores. It will be in the foil packets like regular bread yeast. My bread book had a way to make sourdough starter, if you were willing to take 6 months to get sourdough starter that was usable alone for leavening. Aparently it’s also hooch after fermenting long enough. I don’t know how desperate you need to be to drink it for a buzz, but I’d say very desperate. I’m not going to give the instructions from the book because it takes up a whole page. The book is Sunset Breads Step by Step Techniniques, published by Lane Publishing. It covers alot for the serious bread maker.

9

I used to work with a woman who made Friendship Fruit. What is the ingredient that these two items would have in common?

10

Perhaps they both ferment, so when you give some of the “fruit starter” away you are passing live cultures (yeasts most likely, sometimes certain bacteria) that help ferment the next batch of fruit.

I’ve only vaguely heard of Friendship Fruit, but the idea behind the Friendship Bread is you need starter to make the bread and you get that passed to you from a friend. I imagine the fruit idea is similar.

11

You can get sourdough starter hereat Carl’s Friends for a SASE. Click on How to get Carl’s Starter. I think I got this link from another thread on sourdough.

12

Sourdough starter is easy enough to make yourself.

Mix equal amounts of organic white flour and water (worth using filtered water if the water where you live is highly treated) . together to form something about the consistency of pouring cream. Cover it up and leave it on the bench. The next day add about the same amount of flour and water, keep doing this until you’ve got lots of bubbles. If you find you’ve got too much flour and water, toss half of it away, but keep feeding.

Depending on the weather should take about ten days to get a starter active enough to make bread with.

More detailed instructions here and here.

13

it’s been ages ago, but i think i got some of that Friendship Fruit once. aside from both bread and fruit sitting around and fermenting, and getting fed sugar, i don’t really think they have a lot in common. Friendship Fruit becomes semi-alcoholic due to fermentation. the bread just gets leavened. all thanks to yeasts’ little by-products.