Monday, April 14, 2008

When I was in high school, someone gave me a zip lock baggie of oozing friendship bread starter. The idea is you let the goo age for 10 days, add ingredients and then you bake it into a loaf of bread. The friendship part comes in when you separate a portion of that aged starter into other bags and give it to friends to make their own bread. And so on. And so forth.

I was obsessed with it. I kept making it. And it kept growing more. Soon we ran out of family members to give the bubbling bags of starter to, but I couldn't bring myself to throw them out. Throw out friendship?! There were gurgling, burping zip lock bags all over our kitchen and my mom finally had to throw them out bringing an end to my manaical bread production streak.

When I came home last week, this was on our kitchen counter. Ack! A coworker bequeathed Aaron with a gooey bag of friendship bread starter. We have begun the process of Day 1 - mush bag, Day 2 - mush bag, Day 3 - mush bag... etc.

This time I am giving away all the starter. I cannot allow our house to become a friendship bread breeding ground.

Tina, Shruti, Aprille and Joel. Prepare yourselves. In a few days you've got some friendship coming your way.

11 comments:

  1. i had the same "out of control" issue - bags of starters were everywhere and I couldn't find enough ppl to give them away.

    So instead, I put the bags of batter into the freezer. It's a great way to "preserve" the batter and use them later.

    When you're ready, just take out the batter and let it sit for 10 days, on the fifth day add the ingredients it calls for. On the last day do not add the extra flour milk and sugar, and then follow the baking instructions.

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  2. I had to laugh when I read your post...its kind of like the zucchini gardener in the country....when the neighbors see you coming with it they run. I made it about three years ago...about 8 weeks into it, we were sick of eating it, and my family and friends were sick of it as well...i have been spring cleaning and just found the recipe again and think I might go another round!

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  3. I just read about this yesterday here:
    http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2008/04/how-to-love-for.html

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  4. i got one of these about a month ago... the freezer stops the mad multiplication factor. :)

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  5. I also had a friendship item but mine was a cake. It was soooo good. When I built my house, we were one of the first people to move in. Guess what all the neighbors who moved in afterwards got. Friendship cakes. I wasn't cruel to give them the bags, I just made the cakes. Here is the problem - the cakes were so good, they wanted the recipe. Couldn't give it to them, I had used up all the starter bags. Denise

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  6. Oh my gosh, I remember this! It was popular here 11 years ago when I was pregnant. I would bake the friendship bread all the time and eat it myself. I was HUGE!

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  7. My mother did this once when I was younger. If I remember right the starters stayed around for over a year and the frozen loaves stayed around for a couple of years after that. It was crazy. Lately I've been going through nostalgic time and have kind of been wanting some!

    You can make a really awesome 7-up glaze to go on the bread too!

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  8. i used to love friendship bread.. then i discovered that the cinnamon swirl quick bread mixes taste pretty much like fsb without the stress and responsibility. friendship bread is a chain letter that won't go away.

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  9. Our house too, had a similar experience with the bread. We dubbed it "kudzu" bread. Maybe only southerners would get that, but it an acurate description!

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  10. An option other than freezing it is to just feed it a smaller amount. Feed it an equal amount as you are going to remove to make. So as I remember, you use 1 cup to bake with so add 1/3 c milk, 1/3 cup flour, 1/3 c sugar. That ends the out of control production.

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  11. It is a sickness, but it is sooooo good!

    Mail me one next time and I'll bake it!

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