Amish Friendship Bread Starter Recipe & Printable (2024)

FAQs

Is amish friendship bread starter the same as sourdough starter? ›

Since it involves sugar and milk, Amish friendship starter has a sweeter taste than standard sourdough starter, and it does require commercial yeast to take off, but its principle is still the same — share what you have with others.

Once they've matured, they can be stored in the fridge or freezer and fed every week or two to keep them alive. A properly fed and stored starter can last for years. Lore has it that Amish mothers used to pass down some of their starter to their daughters when the daughters married.

This is usually the case in cold environments (AC under 70F, winter kitchens). If your starter is barely bubbling or not bubbling at all 12-24 hours after the last feeding, simply stir it again and let the jar sit for a day or two. Then feed again and see if you get bubbles.

Need a break from your Amish Friendship Bread starter? You can throw it in the freezer, and when you're ready to use it again, use our "Reviving Frozen Starter" tutorial to help your starter get back to its active, bubbly self. >>

If your starter looks discolored with a pink or green tinge, has mold (a no-brainer but worth mentioning), or if the sharp acetone smell doesn't go away, discard your starter and make a new one from scratch. It's sad, but so is food poisoning. The rule in the Friendship Bread Kitchen is: when in doubt, throw it out.

Over the past decade-plus of baking, I've tested all manner of flour from whole grain wheat to spelt to einkorn, and while they all do work, my preferred flour to use when creating a sourdough starter is whole grain rye flour and white flour (this can be all-purpose or high-protein bread flour).

The original instructions for Amish Friendship Bread states that you should not use metal bowls or utensils. The original reason was because there's a chemical reaction that occurs between the fermenting starter and metal.

Amish friendship bread is a type of bread or cake made from a sourdough starter that is often shared in a manner similar to a chain letter. The starter is a substitute for baking yeast and can be used to make many kinds of yeast-based breads, shared with friends, or frozen for future use.

The color, for one thing. The presence of a few bubbles is another. And if you were able to crack the bags open and take a whiff, the one on the left smelled nice and yeasty while the other smelled like nothing at all (this will not always be the case—old, underfed or spoiled starter can smell quite awful.

The liquid layer on top of your starter is called hooch. It is a combination of alcohol/water and is a byproduct of fermentation.

How do you know if your bread starter is bad? ›

Starvation - if you don't feed your starter for a long period of time it will develop harmful bacteria and mold. This will smell terrible and look orange, pink or fuzzy and green. Mold - mold can also occur in a well fed starter if there are mold spores on any of the equipment you've used or in the flour you're using.

Pour off as much of the dark hooch as you can. Discard most of the starter (you can either just remove it from the jar or place some of the starter into a clean jar). Feed the remaining starter with 100g of flour and 100g of water. Let it sit out at room temp for around 12 hours.

A Herman starter or Amish Friendship Bread Starter is typically made with milk, flour, sugar and commercial yeast. A sourdough starter is generally made only of flour and water. A Herman starter will be sweeter and more mellow flavored than a sourdough starter.

If too much moisture escapes, the bread could dry out. Check expiration dates and use fresh ingredients. For Amish Friendship Bread in particular, you'll want to make sure your yeast (if starting a starter from scratch), baking soda, and baking powder are fresh.

Warmer homes or frequent baking will require more frequent feeding (around every 12 hours), while colder homes every 24 hours. What is this? Storing your sourdough starter in the fridge will require feeding around once a week. It can, however, be stored up to two months in the fridge without being fed.

Generally, you can substitute a packet of yeast for 100g of sourdough starter. If your recipe uses less than a packet of yeast, you can use less sourdough starter, however it won't make too much difference because of the way wild yeast works.

The preparation of sourdough begins with a pre-ferment (the "starter" or "leaven", also known as the "chief", "chef", "head", "mother" or "sponge"), a fermented mixture of flour and water, containing a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli.

Each different sourdough starter type has different properties. Depending on what kind of bread you want to bake one starter might be better than the other.

A poolish is a version of sourdough starter or preferment, except that poolish is made with commercial yeast as opposed to natural or wild yeast. A poolish also requires much less time than a sourdough starter. Both poolish and sourdough starter are fed with wheat flour and fermented at room temperature.