I Need More Friends For This Recipe!

My counter proudly displays a bag of batter.  It is a mixture of flour, milk and sugar and I tend to it daily.  It started as a single cup of ingredients, given to me by my friend, Lisa.  Yes, Lisa gifted me with a 1 cup start bag of Amish Friendship Bread.  I was excited to receive it and remembered making it at different times in my life. When my oldest children were little, they loved getting it and then doing the assigned tasks daily.  Day 1 – You receive your fermented batter in a ziplock one gallon bag.  Just place it on your kitchen counter.  Day 2 – Squeeze the bag several times.  And it goes on for 10 days.  Day 6 you get to add a few more ingredients, but most of the time, you just lift the bag, squeeze it a few times and move it to a different location on your counter.  On day 10 you get to actually bake something and the bread that it makes is delicious!  However, with the bread you bake you are also supposed to give away 4 bags of starter to four of your friends.  The first go round, you may actually have people, like me, who would be excited to receive it, but after that, people have lost interest, so you end up with 4 starter bags for yourself.  I hate to waste, so originally I was baking the bags I couldn’t share.  At this count, I think I have 12 loaves of friendship bread in the freezer for when those friends who rejected my bag of batter show up for tea!  I’ve been blessed to gift people with a baked loaf of bread more often than not, but I seriously need to figure out the math once and for all to try to create a smaller batch.  But, until then, I’ll keep squeezing and baking and blessing others with a surprise loaf of Friendship Bread.

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.    –1 Timothy 6:18