Amish Friendship Bread

Jump to Recipe

Amish Friendship Bread and its accompanying starter has been a part of The Amish Cook column since it began. Almost immediately after The Amish Cook column was launch in 1991, letters began arriving from readers asking various questions about "Amish Friendship Bread."

Jump to:

• Paula's Days of Friendship Bread
• 🍞 Amish Friendship Bread
• 📋 Instructions
• 🍞 More Amish Bread Recipes
• 🖨️ Full Printer

Above is Jessica's Amish friendship bread, below is Paula's. Both came out very well and, wow, is it tasty!

Well, the funny thing is that when I asked the first Amish Cook, Elizabeth Coblentz, about Amish Friendship Bread she had never heard of it, a fact that led some incredulous non-Amish people to question Elizabeth's Amish credentials. However, I am not certain Amish Friendship Bread is as popular among the Amish as it is the non-Amish. Whatever this bread's "street cred" among the Amish is, its identity is inextricably linked with theirs.

We've made several attempts at Amish Friendship Bread over the years on Amish365 and I'm updating this post with the latest.

Paula Cohen, an occasional contributor to Amish365, is a humorist, author, cook, wife, and teacher based in Middletown, Ohio.  She is the author of Bok:  The Memoir of A Dysfunctional Dog and Don't Call Me Worm. She tried making the bread for us and here is her first-hand account.

I’m a good cook, sometimes.  I’m usually game to try something new.  Frequently, I throw in something unexpected just for fun.  So when a friend offered me a starter of Amish Friendship Bread, I thought, why not?  That was my first mistake.

I dutifully took my gallon size Ziploc bag of the ooey-gooey cream -colored starter and read the directions.  That, in itself, was difficult since the recipe had been copied so many times that a grey blur covered some of the directions.  The picture of the finished bread was non-discernable.

Paula's Days of Friendship Bread

Most Amish Friendship Bread starts with a starter, one that you have to spend days tending to before it's ready to roll. Here is Paul's account of those days.

REQUIRED INGREDIENT: 1 cup of live yeast starter

And if you don't know how to make starter, check this post out. But hopefully you can just get a cup of starter from a friend and follow the following instructions:

Day one:  Do nothing.  “Hum,” I thought, “this won’t be too bad.”  This is the date on which you receive the bag.  Squish-squash-mush the bag.  Make sure the bag is dated.  Actually, I believed that the directions should have said that the date is the date the starter began since I don’t think all four of my new starter bags will be delivered on day one.

Days 2,3, 4, and 5:  Squish-squash-mush the bag.  That seemed easy enough until  day three, when we were afflicted with a spring invasion of teeny-tiny ants.  They were smart little buggers for they totally ignored the ant traps we put out on the counters and cabinets.  I cleaned out the cabinets and cleared the counters and searched for a can of crawling bug spray.  Wasp spray, flying insect spray, but no crawling bug spray.

Figuring bug spray was bug spray, I sprayed the cabinets and counters.  The next day when I still saw a parade traversing the lower, horizontal, lower facing of the cabinets, I soaked a cotton ball with the spray and wiped it on the wood.  That did it.  No more ants.

No more starter either.  Seems that the spray had permeated the baggie and killed the yeasty starter.  No amount of squish-squash-mush would bring the starter back to life.  Not a bubble was to be found in the bag.  I hung my head and called my friend to report that I had killed my starter.  She said not to worry that she’d give me a new one.  Of course she had another bag of starter.  At the end of the ten day minding of the starter, you divide the new dough into four new bags to start the process all over again.  She had many bags.

Days 1-5 went well, but starting on day six, I was to be gone for three days.  I told my husband he was in charge of the starter while I was gone.  On day six, he added to the bag: 1 C. sugar, 1C. milk and 1 C flour.  Squish-squash-mush the bag.  It was like the starter was craving that sugar.  The bags rose, bubbled, and fermented quite well.  Per the directions, he let the air out of the bags and moved on to days 7, 8, and 9 when he was instructed to squish-squash-mush the bag daily.

On day ten, I looked at the bag with fear and trembling. I read the directions.  “Do not use any type of metal spoons or bowl for mixing.  Do not refrigerate.  Pour entire contents of bag into a large non-metal bowl and add: 1 C. flour, 1 C. sugar and 1 C. milk.  Measure four separate batches of the starter batter, 1 cup each, into four separate Ziplock bags (one gallon size).  Keep one for yourself and give the other 3 to friends along with a copy of this recipe.”

I froze.  Could I actually take this batter that we had lovingly cared for ten whole days and make it into something edible?  I ran shrieking from the kitchen recipe in hand to my husband.  “You do it.”  I ordered.

Understanding my angst, he took over Operation Amish Friendship Bread.  After dividing the batter into four bags, he followed the rest of the directions.

Jessica's Friendship Bread Experience

We'll include those below, but I want to include the experiences of Jessica with this bread. She made it recently and gave us a loaf to enjoy. And, wow, oh wow, was it so, so, so good.

Jessica's experience and end product were similar. Her starter came to her in a plastic, sealable, Tupperware-type container as opposed to a squishy bag. But the same basic instructions apply.

Here is is what Jessica had to say about the bread along with some super photos:

"It makes your house smell wonderful while it's baking. My friends and neighbors liked receiving the baked bread as gifts."

Jessica also said that the recipe is very "forgiving."
"I left the pudding out of the first batch my mistake and it still turned out delicious."

She said her favorite way to eat is right out of the over with butter bread on it.

Farm fresh eggs are always something that makes the quality of any baked good better!

Sugar, flour milk, very basic ingredients and in that sense this recipe fits the Amish baking profile perfectly!

Mix it all together. Wooden spoons seem to play a big role in the lore of this recipe, so keep them handy!

Your house will smell amazing as the aroma lifts from the oven.

Spread with butter while warm or smothered with cream cheese, it is delicious! Some options for this, variations, include:

Options:  Add 1C. chopped nuts or raisins.  Use chocolate pudding instead of vanilla.

Eat, enjoy, and start the whole process over again.  Squish-squash-mush the bag

🍞 Amish Friendship Bread

• 3 eggs
• 1 C. canola oil
• ½ C. milk
• 1 C. sugar
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. vanilla
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 C. flour
• 1 large box instant vanilla pudding

📋 Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.
3. In another bowl, mix all the wet ingredients.
4. Then in a large bowl, combine the wet and dry ingredients.
5. Grease or butter 2 large loaf pans. 
6. Dust the greased pans with a cinnamon/sugar mixture.
7.   Pour batter evenly into the pans and sprinkle the top with a cinnamon/sugar mixture.
8. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour. 

🍞 More Amish Bread Recipes

Basic Amish white bread, this is a good one too.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread: perfect!

Strawberry Bread: So good!

🖨️ Full Printer