My chance to shine?

I've always joked about wanting to be Amish.  Only in my heart, I'm afraid it might not be a joke.  If they only used coupons and had air conditioning, we probably would already own a horse driven carriage.  I admire their faith, their lifestyle, their names, their simpleness.  I find it all mystifying.

And dang they make good bread and cheese!

I recently was given a start of Amish Bread.  And right on the instructions is a warning that if you fail to continue on with your start, the ONLY way to get another one is from an Amish woman.  And I don't know any Amish women.  So I took this to heart.

I nurtured, mushed, rotated, released air, and loved my bag of rotting bread dough for the necessary days and finally it was bake the bread day.  And so I did- and man was it good!  If  you've never had any Amish Friendship Bread- you gotta find an Amish friend (or drop me a comment- I can get a start in the mail to you : )  It's a sweet yummy bread that is coated in cinnamon sugar..........YUM!

First you add like 89 cups of stuff to your little baggie of yeasty smelling yumminess- then you scoop out more starts to share with friends and then whats left you bake into your bread.  Only I don't know anyone who would appreicate this bread start like I do- so I decided to just measure it all and bake it all into bread.  Then I could share loaves of beautiful bread instead of just mushy mush stuff.  And I did just that.  Except I kept remembering the last line about 'save one for yourself or else you'll have to find an Amish woman to get the secret bread starter again'.  So I saved one. 

And before I knew it, it was bake the bread day again.  And again.  And again.  I have gallon zip lock bags in various stages of Amishness all over my kitchen counter and I can barely keep up with what 'day' they are on and who needs mushed versus flour, sugar & milk added.  It seems like every day is bake the damn bread day and sweet mother there are only so many cups of flour and sugar left in this house and this recipe uses some flour and sugar, let me tell you.

So yesterday- as I was fretting over baking more Amish bread, Dan suggested I just throw them in the trash and cross it off my already full days schedule.

What?  That is AMISH FRIENDSHIP BREAD DAN- from the secret society of Amish woman and their magical bread starting circle.  You can't just throw it away!  It's Amish.  And anything Amish is good.  Geesh- men.

So instead I saved my bread goo and made today Amish bread day.  And as far as I can tell- if I add the stuff to all these bags and bake up all the bread and save NONE of the starters (because that is just more responsibility than I can handle) I will have around 12 loaves of friendship bread.  And no sugar or flour left anywhere.  Or eggs probably.  In fact- I may have to go buy more eggs just to get this show on the road.

And then my brief brush with Amishness will be over.  And apparently I couldn't handle it because all this bread mushing is exhausting.  But on the upside- I didn't know that the Amish used ziplock bags, which they apparently do at least with their bread mushing, so there is always hope still for a future conversion.

Hope you have a happy Amish bread baking day!