Food at the speed of life: Bread keeps on giving

Amish Friendship Bread is good stuff.

I’ve encountered the sweet bread more than once. Most recently, Iris Johnson of Portales gave me a starter.

Iris said she doesn’t think you can make an inedible mistake with the bread.

Amish Friendship Bread works this way:

Somebody gives you a starter, light brown goo in a sealed plastic bag. During the 10-day cycle, you squish the bag daily and feed the starter flour, sugar and milk halfway through.

At the end, you add more ingredients for the batter. You can bake all of it into muffins or loaves or save some for more starters to give away or freeze.

If you don’t freeze the starters, they and bread multiply faster than rabbits.

The traditional recipe has cinnamon, vanilla instant pudding mix and much sugar. You can halve the sugar and replace the oil with plain yogurt or mashed banana.

Iris has put bananas and different flavors of instant pudding mix in the batter, and thinks nuts, raisins or strawberries would also go well.

Ideas:

• lemon pudding mix, ground ginger and nutmeg

• coconut pudding mix with banana

• chocolate pudding mix, banana and cinnamon

If you want a starter and recipe, call me.