Amish Friendship Bread Starter

SUBMITTED BY: GINNY LEE


Now, before accepting this as official, I have to think about what a society who does things in the simplest, most non-commercial way possible (the Amish) would do.

And I have known recipes for sourdough to require the ingredients to be left open to the open air for fermenting. Why? because yeast float around in the air and get into your food--like your milk--and make it go sour. That's where original starters come from. Not Red Star. (Though if you are going to use the above recipe, Red Star is, to me, the best active dry yeast: it makes a killer loaf of challah bread!)

So I read further down in the comments and found one by Olga, who agrees with me in her comment:

 

It's up to you as to how you want to go about doing it. Some people in the comments have made Friendship Bread from the Allrecipes recipe and have sworn it tastes the same. Then there are purists who use the passed-around starter because of, well, for lack of a better term, the "vintage." Yeasts differ slightly from place to place, and a young starter is a different creature (so to speak) than an older starter, whether you keep it for yourself or give some to friends.

Personally, I'm fascinated with the idea that the starter that I got might have gotten all around Louisville, or Kentucky, or even farther around than that, since it's been almost 20 years since I saw starter to begin with! What subtleties and strains it might have picked up from this region and that region!

Happy bread baking!