Amish Friendship Bread
At my daughter’s birthday party last weekend, my friend gifted me (and the other bakeristas in attendance) with a bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter. If you’ve never heard of Amish Friendship Bread, it is basically a kitchen chain letter, albeit a tasty one. Someone gifts you with starter which you care for and create more of. Eventually, you’ll bake off a few loaves and end up with more starter than you began with.
Like all chain letters, Amish Friendship Bread (hereafter known as AFB because I like acronyms) has a few legends and myths woven into it. Here are a few things I found out about AFB while taking care of the batter.
- Despite the name, AFB is not Amish in origin. It likely started in the early 1990s though there’s no way to verify that fact.
- If you want to make AFB but don’t have starter, don’t worry you can make it yourself.
- Traditional starter recipes note to to use metal utensils to handle the starter with or to store the starter as you can mess up the pH of the starter batter. However when mixing up the final batter that you will bake, you can certainly use a metal bowl and/or spoon with no ill results.
- Starter batter is live with yeast and it is normal for it to ferment. Creation of gasses (bubbles in the batter/bag) and a pleasant, tangy smell are evidence of fermentation.
- If the batter turns pinkish or any other off color, it is rotten and needs to be thrown out.
After ten days of diligently caring for the starter, I was eager to bake my very own loaf of Amish Friendship Bread. The problem was, the recipe I was given with the bread had called for instant pudding mix. Not wanting to go to the store just for pudding mix, I decided to try to use up some apples I had around the house by making a low-sugar, low-fat apple cake.
AFB Apple Cake (low-sugar)
Dry Ingredients
- 2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp cinnamon
Wet Ingredients
- 1 c. AFB starter batter
1/2 c. applesauce
1/2 c. oil
3 eggs
1 c. diced apples
For sprinkling
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp cinnamon
Preheat oven to 325F. Prepare a 9″ cake pan by spraying with non-stick spray and sprinkling lightly with half of the cinnamon sugar mixture.
Sift the dry ingredients to combine; set aside in a large bowl. Combine wet ingredients and beat well. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and mix together until just combined.
Pour into prepared cake pan, spreading to make sure the batter is level in the pan. Sprinkle with the remainder of the cinnamon sugar.
Bake at 325F for 40 minutes to an hour until done. Let cool in the pan. Can serve warm or cold.
Makes 1 9″ apple cake
It wasn’t until I tasted it that I realized that I had forgotten a key ingredient — SUGAR!!! Doh! Sadly, there is no photo of the apple cake to commemorate my duncery.
The Hubs ™ thought the cake was fine and honestly, for a low-sugar, low-fat treat, it was decent, especially if you like apples. But I wasn’t happy with it so I decided to go ahead and pick up a package of pudding while I was out to find out what I was missing.
Here’s the “traditional” AFB recipe that comes with the starter batter.
Amish Friendship Bread
Dry Ingredients
2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 package (5.1 oz) pudding, any flavor (recommended: vanilla)
2 tsp cinnamon
Wet Ingredients
1 c. AFB Starter
1 c. oil
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
For sprinkling
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp cinnamon
Preheat oven to 325F. Prepare two loaf pans by greasing well and sprinkling with half of the cinnamon sugar.
Sift together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine wet ingredients and mix well to combine. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and mix to combine.
Divide the batter between the prepared loaf pans. Sprinkle tops with the remaining cinnamon sugar. Bake at 325F for 1 hour. Remove to rack, let cool in pan.
Makes 2 loaves of Cinnamon Amish Friendship Bread.
Despite my original misgivings about using vanilla pudding in this recipe, I think it adds a certain something to the recipe that my previous apple cake was definitely missing. While I had expected a pronounced tang from the AFB starter, there really wasn’t much. But I didn’t mind. It has a great texture, not nearly as cakey as most quick breads can be but not doughy like a yeast bread, either. It is just effing delicious, either on its own or with a cup of coffee. So delicious, in fact, that I’m seriously considering keeping all this lovely starter to myself rather than sharing it just yet 
