Amish Friendship Bread Bonanza

If you've ever been blessed enough to be given Amish Friendship Bread starter then you know how absolutely delicious it is and also how it can overrun your household. Or the households of your friends. There's something ironic about a baked good having the word "friendship" in the title when it can literally make your friends run and hide when they see you coming to give them starter of their very own!

I've been doing some experimenting of late to see if I can remedy the situation. I think I've found a solution that will work for me and thought I'd share it just in case some of the rest of you find yourself overwhelmed from time to time. After all, feeding a starter shouldn't make us groan as though we've been awakened by an infant for a 2 a.m. feeding, or spending so much money on its feeding requirements that it is like having my teenaged son living in the house.

Here's what I've done to make my starter fit into my routine and schedule:

• Freeze it. I found that it does not hurt the integrity of the loaves because more leavening agents are added to the bread batter anyway. The starter is basically for taste, not leavening of the loaves.
• Thaw it when ready to start the 10 day countdown toward the finished product. I count the day that I take it out as Day 1.
• Don't give any of the starter away. Gasp! No, really. I take out 1 cup and return it to a gallon-sized Ziploc as per the directions, put that bag in the freezer for a month or so, and use the rest.
• Triple the bread-making recipe to make 6 loaves. Trust me on this one. If you were to remove the 4 cups of starter (3 to give to friends and 1 to keep) you would have approximately 1 1/2 cups of starter left in the bowl for making a 2-loaf batch of bread. So if you include the 3 cups that you would normally hand off to friends you can see that the recipe can be tripled to make 6 loaves.
• I mix everything up in a gigantic Tupperware that I bought years ago. I found it to be just the right size for allowing yeast bread to rise and now it also doubles as the mixing bowl for this sweet bread. As an important reminder, make sure you have enough flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and pudding mixes on hand before you begin. It is quite shocking how much of each ingredient it takes to make a triple batch.

There are a few other things I've done to the bread recipe that you might or might not like. For instance, I cut the amount of oil in half and substitute applesauce. And speaking of applesauce, the kind I use is pre-sweetened and has cinnamon added. Consequently, I cut back on the amount of sugar by about 1/3. For a triple-batch I used 2 cups as opposed to 3.

We use the loaves in a variety of ways. Since it is a dessert/breakfast bread of sorts, I tend to give the extra loaves to friends and relatives. For some reason, the same people who run away when they see you coming with a bag of starter do not run when they see bread. :)

I enjoy doing a once a month cooking marathon whenever possible. I can bake the bread once a month and dole it out accordingly. This means freezing it quickly before Bear has a chance to down a loaf or two during the cooling stage.

I'm thinking about giving my starter a name like Baby Huey or Traveling Gnome and handing him out for adoption each month. That way we could all share in his care and feeding, he'd be used once a month, and we'd each only be baking from his bounty 4 times a year. Any takers?