Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:54, 13 July 2007

This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Misplaced Pages. See Misplaced Pages's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Amish Friendship Bread (along with Amish Cinnamon Bread) is a type of bread designed to be baked and sent along in a manner similar to a chain letter. The idea is very simple: a friend gives you a cup of yeast culture (also known as "starter") and a copy of instructions. Following the instructions, you add sugar, flour and milk and it rises. Eventually, you end up with 4 cups of the starter. You use one cup to make bread (the instructions provide you with the recipe), keep one cup to start a new cycle and give two cups to your friends. Each of your friends also gets a copy of the instructions for what to do with the yeast starter. The latter part makes it somewhat like a chain letter. Of course, Amish Friendship Bread does not come with any promises of riches for those who spread it on or curses for those who don't.

The first time "Amish Friendship Bread" was discussed on Usenet was in a posting on February 5 1990. It was an experiment by Girl Scout Troop 15, c/o Emilie Manning in Oswego, NY and was posted by Patrick Salsbury.

The results yielding from a traditional Amish Friendship Bread recipe is a sweet quickbread with a taste and crumb very similar to a cake. The starter, however, may be used to make lots of different types of bread.

A similar recipe, named "Hermann" has existed in Germany since the 1980s.

See also

• Coffee cake
• Sourdough

External links

• Some online versions of the Amish Friendship bread instructions:

http://www.armchair.com/recipe/bake002.html
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-friendship-bread-starter/detail.aspx
http://breadnet.net/friendship.html

• Early online posting - the first on Usenet, February 5 1990

• Yeast breads
• Sweet breads
• American breads
• Lancaster, Pennsylvania cuisine