Amish Friendship Bread

   A coworker who knows my love of bread baking brought me a starter for friendship bread. It takes several days of squishing and mushing in the bag, 5 days into it, you feed it with a cup each of flour, sugar and milk. On the 9th day, you feed it once more and take out four 1cup servings to bag and give to friends. You use the rest of the dough/batter to make your bread at that time.

   I chose to use all the starter dough/batter and make 6 loaves of bread. It takes about 2 cups of starter for each recipe and each recipe makes 2 loaves. You add the list of ingredients that should come with the starter your friend gives you. It's roughly 3 eggs, 1 cup each of sugar and milk, 1 and 1/2 cups flour, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp baking soda and powder, vanilla and salt. Lastly you add one large package of vanilla pudding mix. Stir it together. 

   Take a cup of sugar and a tbsp of cinnamon and mix. Grease 2, or in my case 6, loaf pans and dust with cinnamon sugar mixture. Pour in the batter leaving at least 1 inch at the top for rising. Dust the tops of the loaves with the remaining sugar mixture. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. The bread is amazing. Very moist and sweet - good for breakfast. 

   Now, I just need to get the starter recipe from my coworker. :)  Stay tuned.   

St. Patty's Day

   We went to our hunt camp for St. Patrick's Day. I do love all the holiday festivities, theme parties and cooking that goes along with this holiday and I didn't want to miss out. So I made some rye bread and bought a cornbeef roast to take to camp to make some reubens.
   I started the dough on Wednesday night. Bread flour, rye flour, sugar, honey, yeast and water. I let the sponge rest for a whole 24 hours. Thursday night, I added the dry ingredients: bread flour, salt, yeast, and caraway seeds by pouring them over the sponge to let it bubble through. After about 3 hours, I added the oil and kneaded it all into a dough. I let the dough rise over night. Friday morning, I punched it down and covered it again to rise Friday while I was at work. Friday night, I punched it down one more time and then divided the dough into 2 torpedo loaves. While the oven was preheating to 450, the dough rises a little bit more. Bake at 450 for about 15 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 375. This helps the crust form.

   I didn't slice the loaves until Satuday once we got to camp and began making dinner. But the inside was exactly perfect. Light and fluffy with a chewy crust. The caraway seeds give rye bread it's amazing flavor.

   We put the cornbeef roast in the crockpot for about 6 hours with 1/4 cup brown sugar and a 12 oz. bottle of Guinness - my favorite recipe for cornbeef! Add some thousand island dressing and sourkraut. Delish!