Someone recently offered me a portion of Amish Friendship Bread starter. Their offer brought back a flood of AFB memories, and I feel compelled to share my long and sordid history with AFB.
I was a 4-H kid. In case you haven't been acquainted with 4-H, it is a youth program historically designed to introduce children of farmers in rural areas to modern agricultural concepts. Since its inception, the 4-H program has grown to encompass many other non-agricultural topics including community service, leadership, public speaking, civics and government, and science (mostly ecological). Hence, I was in 4-H, but I lived in suburbia and had no livestock (except for the market lamb I raised a friend's house...but that's another story).
My family became a "4-H family" when I was in 2nd grade. During those early years, most of the other families we met were farm families, so its not surprising that my two best friends both lived on farms. Their names were Wendy and Jody. But I digress...
Sometime around 7th grade, AFB became something of a fad. Everyone was making it. You must remember, this is before AIM and text messaging. How do children from conservative rural families feel connected to each other and drive their parents crazy? The answer is Amish Friendship Bread. My mom calls it the Amish Friendship Curse.
For you to understand this, let me explain the AFB process. You receive a "starter", which is a cup or so of bubbling fermented goo, usually given to you by a "friend", and let it sit on your counter. For several days you ignore the goo and the vague sensation that the prospect of eating this mess is kind of gross.
About a week into the project, you feed your new pet some flour, sugar, and milk. You continue to let the mess sit on the counter, bubbling away and collecting its own constellation of fruit flies. Sometimes you have to dispose of a fruit fly who met a sticky end in the Amish Friendship Vat of Death. About this time, you start to realize that your house is smelling fermented.
Finally, on day 10 or so, you feed the slime one more time and divide it into portions. You bake a portion into bread by adding more flour, sugar, and seasoning. You keep a portion to start your next batch. Then you "bless" your friends by giving them an AFB starter of their very own.
As a child, the first time you get Amish Friendship Bread is thrilling. What kid wouldn't enjoy the prospect of a culinary chemistry experiment? Then you experience AFB and realize that all you want to do is secretly dispose of your remaining starter in hopes of extinguishing the trail.
But then it comes back to you. Somehow, more than one person thinks you'd enjoy the AFB experience. Unexpectedly, your friend opens a tote bag, hands you a nasty-looking ziplock bag and says, "Here...I thought you might like an Amish Friendship Bread starter." You can't say no because that would be rude. So you take the baggie, saying, "Aw, thanks for thinking of me." Then you go home and dump the stuff down the garbage disposal. Later, when your friend asks you how the bread turned out, you mumble something about going on vacation and not being able to feed it.
So that, in short, is my experience with Amish Friendship Bread. To anyone out there who really loves making, giving, and eating this stuff, please don't let my bad attitude sour the experience for you. AFB really is one of those cultural experiences that everyone should have at least once in their life. I've already eaten my lifetime quota of AFB, so I won't be offended if you leave me out of the loop.
Happy baking!
