Feed the World with Amish Friendship Bread
She Who Puts Up With Me made Amish Friendship Bread last week. For those of you who not familiar with the concept, this is a bread which starts with a cup of starter which ferments for ten days. After ten days, it makes about a pound of very dense, sweet bread plus four more cups of starter. The "Friendship" part comes when you give four of your closest friends one cup of new starter each, and the process starts over.
So, as long as everyone keeps at it, every ten days the world contains four times as much Amish Friendship Bread as it did before. If you start with a single loaf of bread, and you have 16 close friends, after 20 days each of your friends has their own loaf of Amish Friendship Bread, plus starter for four of their friends. But it gets better.
There's probably 200 kids in Scooter's preschool, so after 40 days, every preschool family has Amish Friendship Bread. That's just over a month. Not bad.
The Twin Cities metro area has about three million residents. By Day 110, or about four months, every person in the Twin Cities can eat a loaf of freshly baked Amish Friendship Bread.
After 150 days, or five months, the entire United States gets to bake a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread, with quite a bit left over for parts of Europe and Japan.
Ten days after that, nearly the entire population of the Earth has been included (except China, which is too busy growing its economy to bake Amish Friendship Bread).
If we assume that a person can survive on one loaf of Amish Friendship Bread per day (this stuff is pretty sweet--packs a lot of calories), then after 180 days we can feed the entire planet. Imagine that: In just six months, we can end world hunger by baking bread!
But why stop there? In 420 days--less than a year and a half--the entire planet Earth would be made of moist, sweet, squishy Amish Friendship Bread. The Moon, too.
And in 510 days, the entire solar system. It takes a little longer to get up to the entire Milky Way galaxy. About 710 days, or two years, should do the trick.
As you can see, Amish Friendship Bread is pretty powerful stuff. Here's the recipe:
Amish Friendship Bread (Amish Cinnamon Bread)
First, obtain a cup of starter. Since the entire universe will shortly be composed of Amish Friendship Bread, this should pose no difficulty.
IMPORTANT: DO NOT USE METAL BOWLS OR SPOONS AND DO NOT REFRIGERATE THE STARTER. As air builds in the plastic bag with the starter, let it out. It is normal for the starter to thicken, bubble, and ferment.
DAY 1 - Receive starter in ziplock bag. Do nothing. Leave bag on counter.
DAY 2 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 3 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 4 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 5 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 6 - Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup milk. Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 7 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 8 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 9 - Squeeze bag several times.
DAY 10 - In a large non-metallic bowl, combine starter with 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour, and 1 cup sugar. Mix with wooden or plastic spoon. Take four one-gallon ziplock bags and pour one cup of starter in each. Give each bag of starter to a friend with a copy of these instructions.
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a separate bowl, mix 6 Tbs sugar, 2 Tbs cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp allspice. Sprinkle into two well-greased bread pans.
To the remaining batter, add:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 large (or 2 small) box vanilla pudding mix (NOTE: Probably not an authentic Amish ingredient!)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
Mix well, pour into bread pans, and bake at 350 F for 45 minutes or until a toothpick poked into the center of the loaf comes out clean.