Thursday, April 29, 2010

Friendship Bread

10 days ago, one of my coworkers gave me a starter thing of Friendship Bread. I have dutifully mushed it and added the various ingredients. It came time to separate it, which required adding more milk. Milk that we don't have. Oh sure, we have SOY milk, but I don't know if it would ferment the same as cow's milk. So thus, instead of adding ingredients and then separating it, I just added the remaining "to make bread" ingredients and forewent the giving out of starters. Sorry guys, I know how disappointed you are right now. Please try to contain your sadness.

There's another problem. I don't have loaf pans. So it is in a 9 x 11 (or some such) pan instead. So, we'll see how this crazy bread turns out.

The thing I find funny about this whole Friendship Bread thing is that it's like a pyramid scheme...AND they have this silly little admonition about not giving away all your starter because only the Amish know how to make starter. well, the Amish and Google. there's also the rule of "DON'T USE METAL BOWLS OR THE WORLD WILL END IN A FIERY FIREBALL!" And I find this ludicrous. What's the thing of 'no metal bowls'? is it supposed to make the recipe more "Amish"? It's basically soured milk and yeast. I've made soured milk and yeast things in metal bowls all the time without any ill effects.

So now the bread is baking away, hopefully it's decent. Maybe we'll have this for dinner instead of Breakfast Potatoes. :)

1 comment:

The Spiteful Chef said...

Soooo...friendship bread is basically a sourdough starter. You feed it every day, and the yeast ferments and breeds more yeast. The milk is to add sugar and a touch of fat on which the yeasties live. And sourdough takes a while to ferment and get that great sour smell and taste. So that's demystified :)

Also, you can use a stainless steel bowl, just not iron or copper or other reactive metals, which can eff up your starter. And that's for all sourdoughs.

Amish people want to take credit for everything.