Delicious Delights: Amish Bread

Delicious Delights is a pretty obvious section. :) This section is about things I make (or friends make) to eat! These will be things that look fabulous as well as taste fabulous...we hope. Hopefully you can learn from any mistakes I make.

This time it is Amish Bread! I've been on a bread craze lately, and I just bought ingredients for a Blueberry Lemon Yogurt Loaf (Pinterest find!), so I'll let you know how that goes.

Amish Bread is a recipe that is fermented yeast. I know, it sounds absolutely disgusting, but it is so good -- it has a lot of sugar in it. Just as a side note, this is not a gluten-free, heart-healthy, anything-healthy food section; its just a yummy section. :) You let the recipe sit on your counter in a gallon Zip-lock bag for 10 days, following the directions for each day, and on day 10 you bake it! It smells weird, and like its rotten, but no worries, its fine. Technically its called Amish Friendship Bread, but that name is too long for me. Its called that because on day 10, you make 4 new Zip-lock bags of Amish Bread. Then it is day 1 again. You give these bags, along with a recipe to your friends and then they can make it...problem is, how do you start it? Well, I found a start recipe that I like, and that worked for me (there are a ton out there) I found the recipe here: http://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/pantry/amish-friendship-bread-starter but I altered it a little bit for convenience.

Amish Bread Start:
1/4 C hot water
3 1/4 tsp yeast
1 C flour
1 C sugar
1 C milk

Dissolve yeast into water. Whisk flour and sugar together in a bowl. Slowly mix in milk and yeast mixture into flour and sugar mixture. Pour into gallon sized Zip-Lock bag, seal, and write the date on the outside. This is your Day 1

Daily Instructions (this is the part you give your friends when you give a start to them):
Day 1: Do nothing
Days 2-5: Mush the bag (just squish it around enough to feel like you've mixed it)
Day 6: Add 1 C flour, 1 C sugar and 1 C milk, mush REALLY well, otherwise you get clumps of flour left in your bag
Days 7-9: Mush
Day 10: Oven at 325. Pour contents of bag into a large mixing bowl. Add 1 1/2 C flour, 1 1/2 C sugar, 1 1/2 C milk and stir. Then, with a 1 C measuring cup and 4 new Zip-Locks, measure 1 cup of the mixture into each bag, seal and date (or stick in the freezer for later use. The day you take it out of the freezer is Day 1). Then (don't forget this part! I forgot it the first time...and this is basically everything. It turned out awful...of course) add:
3 eggs
1 C oil
1/2 C milk
1 C sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 C flour

Grease 2, 9" loaf pans and then dust entire pan with sugar. Pour batter evenly into each pan, dust top of batter with sugar (I told you it had lots of sugar in it). Bake at 325 for 1 hour. Believe me, its well worth the wait.

Here are some pictures of my delicious Amish Bread!

I was so excited that it was done, I couldn't wait to take the picture until I had dumped it out, so I took it right then! The tops are my favorite after they're done, soft and sugary...mmmmm 

Let me know how it turns out for you! Happy baking!