Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Friendship Bread Without the "Friend"

I promise I won't whine (again) about my lack of female friends. You're tired of reading about it, I'm tired of writing about it, we're both just sick of it. But, this latest problem just takes the cake...or maybe I mean, the dough.

On Christmas Day, my grandmother handed me a ziploc bag of bread dough and a sheet of paper with a recipe on it: "Amish Friendship Bread". I had done this gig before and knew the drill. For those of you unfamiliar with this 10 day ritual, here's the deal:

1. You get the bag of dough from a "friend" along with a set of directions and the recipe.
2. You have to babysit the bag of dough for ten days. This includes, but is not limited to: mushing the bag, letting the fermented air out and adding 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of sugar on day 6. The bag will sit on your counter for the entire time. I know it sounds gross, but it works. The Amish seem to know their bread just as well as they know quilts.
3. On day 10, you dump the dough into a non-metal bowl and add 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of sugar. Mix this whole thing together.
4. Measure out 4 cups of dough and place each cup (1 cup) in ziploc bag and write today's date on the bag. Keep one bag for yourself and give the other bags to 3 friends. Follow the rest of the recipe and bake the remaining mixture into bread.

I did all of this and was left with a delicious loaf of bread and 4 bags of dough. Now, I was suppose to give the 3 bags to 3 friends.

Well, I don't have any friends.

So I decided that I'm going to keep all four bags because this bread is so delicious that I can just keep making it and freeze it.

Can you tell I failed math in college?

Yesterday was day 10 for the 4 bags of dough I had been babysitting. As I'm splitting the bags up into fours, I suddenly realized I was going to be left with 16 bags of dough. If I kept those going, in another 10 days I would have 64 bags of dough.

I threw the all the dough away. I just don't need that kind of pressure.

13 comments:

  1. The Amish bread is pretty awesomely delicious, but I don't have any friends to share it with, either.

    But can you imagine the eating binge 64 loaves of Amish bread would make? HEAVEN ON EARTH.

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  2. LOL...that is too funny. You could do a web giveaway. If you get enough out there, the dough can take over the world and you can be its leader.

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  3. I only have a few close female friends and only 1 lives anywhere near me. Yeah I would be up a creek too. I love me some bread though!

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  4. Don't throw it out....I'm hungry send it this way!!

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  5. I'll take one! I've never tried Amish bread!

    Its really hard to meet girlfriends, if you don't work with them. I've considered going on Plenty of Fish to look for girls as friends but I thought I maaay just end up in a lesbian relationship I wasn't counting on lol

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  6. Oh, for crapsake, stop your whining. You know I live less than an hour away, and I'm your friend. Where's my fuckin' bread?

    I'll be totally upfront and say that I wouldn't do anything with that dough other than make me some bread. Even the babysitting of said dough sounds like something I'd get sick of ;)

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  7. I haven't had the Amish friendship bread in YEARS!!! I remember it was good, but can't really remember it, KWIM?

    P.S. I'll send you your questions soon. I need to think on this a spell.

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  8. BadAss: 64 loaves would be the ultimate food orgy!

    Heinous: It's pretty gross looking just sitting in the bag. It's not something you want to receive in the mail.

    Kat: I am a breadaholic! I can eat a whole loaf all by myself. It's scary to watch.

    Cameron: Sorry sweetie! It's all gone.

    Phoenix: This is the best bread ever!!! You don't even need butter!

    Lola: It really is a pain in the ass to babysit. One day I forgot to let the air out and the ziploc bag almost burst!

    Debbie: This was the first time I've had it in years! I'm glad it's gone because I couldn't stop eating it! Don't be shy with those questions! You know how I love to put it out there!

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  9. I'm with Heinous, you should have started a giveaway because you certainly have a lot of bloggy friends.
    Though the post office might think it's anthrax or something and then you'd find yourself in an airless room being interrogated, held forever without contacting your family or an attorney .. now that I think about it, you made the right choice throwing it away.

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  10. You have an award waiting at my place

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  11. Cape Cod Gal - Loved this story. Actually, it touches a cord with me. First, because I love bread (yum!) and second because I could count all of my female friends without using all my fingers on one hand before I moved to Cleveland. My first "mommy playdate" felt like the biggest culture shock since I moved straight back from a management position in Japan and directly into nightshift at a UAW plant under contract negotiations. I'm not kidding. Hard to remember all of that, but it is true. It is REALLY hard to find an awesome group of friends.

    But, anyway, I see you have managed it quite nicely on the blogosphere!

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  12. Good thing you threw it away. I think it tastes like crap, personally. There are much better bread recipes out there. And who needs all those calories? You could have just kept yourself one batch of the dough each time, save one to keep it going, and make a loaf a week or something. If you like it enough to bother.

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  13. Smart move pitching it. My mom's friend used to give us friendship bread and it was disgusting. I don't have any friends either, don't worry. If they made a "virtual" friendship bread, I might be able to get rid of the crap but otherwise, I'd have pitched it like you did.

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