amish friendship bread

After the agony that was my middle school experience, joining an environmental science program at a small, rural high school felt like finding the keys to heaven (oh god, has a dorkier sentence ever been typed?).  A huge portion (a statistically bizarre amount) of all my favorite people came from my time there, where we stomped through muddy bogs in giant fisherman boots (this was before Hunter boots were a thing in America), had the bottoms of our flared jeans  (again, this was before skinny jeans) freeze and form ice droplets in the middle of West Virginia, and had to borrow batteries from each other for our walkmen to play music on long field trip bus rides (have I mentioned this was a long time ago…before smart phones or cell phones for that matter!). It was a really magical era and while literally a lifetime of experiences have since gone by, I still feel like it was yesterday.  And yes, it would be totally weird for me to show up at a prom or ride a school bus today, but one experience from the past that I can still hold onto, and recreate, is Amish Friendship Bread.

Amish Friendship Bread starts its life as a very loose batter that grabs air borne yeast to develop (or just cheat like me, and just add yeast).  You feed it (flour, sugar and milk) and as it grows, you divide and share it among friends. My friend Lara brought it to school one day, and the next week it was like a Star Trek tribbles situation in Poolesville- bags of starter had spread far and wide, lockers were stuffed with multiple packs of divided batter people forgot to take home or share, and, with only around 200 kids in each grade, every available friend ended up “bagged” several times.  Despite all that, it was so much fun.   But after a few weeks, life moved on, boyfriend dramas popped up, big exams and essays were going on and a million other things that felt super important to a 15 year old me filled up my brain and heart and the Amish Friendship Bread Craze of 1995 became a distant, but delicious memory.

Then years later, as a mom, I thought, why not bring this tradition back?  Little kids love kneading bags of goo, the feeding is simple enough for little hands to handle and it’s always fun to bake up something delicious and fresh, especially after tending to the ingredients and practicing counting for 1-10 days. So, I started handing it out and making the Amish Friendship Bread cakes at the end of each year to my son’s classmates and my mommy groups.   I like to start my starter around Thanksgiving, because (in a normal year) it is very fun to share the starters with guests and people that pop in during the holidays.  Christmas is the perfect time to bake up the friendship breads and to distribute them as gifts.  During a covid year, all this stuff might need to be organized around porch drop offs, but it is still a great activity and I think worth the waiting, separating, and sharing.  It bakes up and smells amazing (which would be the liberal cinnamon, sugar coating the cakes receive!).  I have included templates for the direction/ recipe cards and give-away cards, this is one thing that would be great to spread around this year!  I like to print mine out on stiffer paper-like cardstock (and craft paper colored paper gives this a rustic, Amish feel, tied to your starter baggie with twine just screams farmhouse chic, or as the Amish would call it, “where we live” chic.  I’m not sure they are allowed to say chic. So just “where we live-style”). I also include a box of pudding, since I feel like that is the only ingredient that might not be a staple. This website – friendshipbreadkitchen.com has so many recipes for you once you have exhausted your porch drop off possibilities.  Leaving them in a high school locker at this point would just be weird and probably illegal!  The friendship bread kitchen website, however, is totally legit, and is like a never-ending tunnel of recipes using this simple starter. Make sure to tie a string from this website, or you might never find your way out again, their collection is so immersive!  You can also freeze your starter when you need a break from AFB, just keep it in the back of your mind like a good high school memory waiting to not be re-lived, but re-invented for today’s life. Happy baking!