Amish Guilt Bread

About a week and a half ago I took a little jaunt up to Idaho to visit my little brother (and by little, I mean a good 8-10 inches taller than me, depending on whether or not he's wearing his cowboy boots, and outweighing me by 80 lbs... my absolutely minuscule, tiny brother). It was his daughter's first birthday, and there was no way I was missing that party.

While I was there, little brother introduced me to a phenomenon known as "Amish Friendship Bread." It is a bread that spawns from a starter mixture that only the Amish know!!! I'm pretty sure it consists of nothing more than milk, flour, sugar, and yeast. Anyway, since only the Amish know the recipe, the only way to get your hands on this starter is by receiving it from a friend... who got it from a friend... who got it from a friend... who mugged an Amish woman in Pennsylvania just so he could get the recipe. The Amish woman didn't give him the recipe, but, being Amish, invited her assailant in, fed him a loaf of bread, and sent him away with a starter and a promise to come visit the family next Easter.

So, here's the deal. If you get the starter, you have to wait 10 days before cooking it. It has to ferment. Sounds tasty, right? Sure. Anyway, you just squish the bag a few times, add some more milk, sugar, and flour on day 5 or so, and voila. You have a bunch of bread material right there.

Then comes the tricky part. You have to add more flour, sugar, and milk, divide it up into 4 portions, keep one for yourself, and then you must give 3 portions to your 3 closest friends, or else you don't have any friends, nobody loves you, and you will never get the starter back! If it does come back, you know who your friends are.

Basically, this is Amish chain mail.

Now, for those of us who only bake when we want to, because we want to, this 10 day program has a bit of a hiccup in it. And that's... well... when day 10 rolls around, you'd better hope you're in the baking mood, because there's not much wiggle room for "I don't wanna."

Day 10 hit.

I texted my little brother, asking if I had to bake the bread right then, or if it could maybe ferment for, you know, another month. He responded that I might be able to eek another couple days out of it, but that I'd really better not wait too long.

Day 12 hit.

I started feeling guilty.

I mean, I got this from my brother, and I needed to know who my friends were, because without this friendship bread, I might have to rely on emails I stopped forwarding in 1998, and those have a tendency to curse you with bleeding eye sockets and failure in love for the rest of your life if you don't send them fast enough.

Also, the dough was emitting so much gas that the Ziploc freezer bag it was in was about to explode all over my kitchen.

So, even though I was SO NOT in the baking mood tonight, I sucked up and did it.

I added the extra milk, flour, and sugar.

The directions clearly outlined the next step: "Measure out 4 separate batters.... Keep a starter for yourself and give away the other three to friends."

I snorted. "Ha. Screw that. If I give them to friends I might get one back."

So, rather than give my dearest of friends a bag of something they have to wait 10 days to eat, and can only eat after cooking it themselves, and then risk getting one back and having to do the whole thing all over again, I simply tripled the recipe and decided to make a LOT of bread. If I actually have any friends... which I will never know, since I'm not sending out any starters... I can make them think we're friends by giving them a cooked loaf of this stuff instead.

Then came the most ridiculously complicated bread recipe I could possibly have thought of attempting. Three separate trips to the store and some misread directions later, I finally had my 2 largest mixing bowls filled to the brim with dough. Oh... and let me just include... FOUR HOURS LATER. I feel that, for not being in the baking mood, that alone is quite the monumental accomplishment.

So, I baked the bread. I rid myself of the starter. I stopped the chain mail in its tracks.

"If you send this on, and it comes back to you, you will know who your true friends are. If you do not send this on to at least three friends, you will spend four hours baking bread, and then have to find homes for 3 loaves, 2 coffee cakes, and a pan of cupcakes."

That's right. The chain mail stops here.

Does anybody want some bread?