Experimenting with flavors

Blueberry and Orange Walnut
Friendship Breads

In my last post, I described making Friendship Starter. It's a 10 day process that starts with a mixture of yeast, flour, sugar, and milk that you keep on the counter, stir, and "feed" until it's ready to use in a sourdough sweet style bread. (Recipe for the starter is repeated at the bottom of this post.)

Today was the final day of "growing the starter".  At this point, you end up with 3 cups of starter.

I put 1 cup of starter in the refrigerator to give to a friend, and the second cup I kept on the counter to begin another 10 day cycle.

To the 3rd cup of starter, I made this recipe,  

Friendship Bread with Two Variations

1 c. starter

2/3 c. vegetable oil

3 eggs

2 c. flour

1 c. sugar

½ tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda
(original recipe includes 1 tsp. vanilla, but I omitted it at this point.)

In a large bowl, combine starter with oil, sugar, and eggs.  Mix flour, salt, baking powder, etc. Add to batter and mix well. 

At this point, I divided the mixture into 2 batches to try out a couple of different flavors.

To one bowl, I added 1/2 tsp. vanilla and a generous 1/2 cup of frozen wild blueberries. 

To the second bowl, I added the grated rind of an orange (about 1 & 1/2 tsp.) and 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts. I didn't add vanilla.

I buttered and floured mini aluminum loaf pans (3 1/2" x 6 1/2"), and added the batter to about 3/4 full. I ended up with 3 pans of blueberry, and 2 pans of orange/walnut and sprinkled with sugar. Coarse or demerara sugar would be best.

I baked the loaves in a preheated 350 F oven for about 35 minutes until the breads tested done. If you use 9 x 5 loaf pans, bake for about 50 minutes.

The breads are moist and flavorful. Using small loaf pans allows you to experiment with various flavors, extracts, fruits, chocolate, etc. Cinnamon chocolate, apple cinnamon, lemon, cranberry walnut, almond flavored are some ideas to try. If you hit on a good combination, let me know!

Friendship Starter

1 (.25 oz) pkg. active dry yeast

¼ c. warm water (110 degrees F)

3 c. all-purpose flour

3 c. granulated sugar 

3 c. milk

(Today you will be using only 1 cup each of flour, sugar and milk. The remaining cups of flour, sugar and milk will be used over the next 9 days.)

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand 10 minutes. In a 2 quart glass, plastic, or ceramic bowl (do not use metal container or metal spoon), combine 1 c. flour and 1 c. sugar. Mix thoroughly or flour will lump when milk is added. Slowly stir in 1 c. milk and the dissolved yeast mixture. Leave loosely covered at room temperature. 

Consider this Day 1 of the 10 day cycle. 

On days 2-4, stir starter with (non-metal) spoon.

Day 5 – stir in 1 c. flour, 1 c. sugar and 1 c. milk.

Days 6-9, stir only.

Day 10 – stir in 1 c. flour, 1 c. sugar, and 1 c. milk. 

Now you're ready to take 1 cup of the starter and make your Friendship Bread.

Starter

I took the week off between Christmas and the New Year just hanging around the house. Now I'm hunkering down with 8 to 14 inches of snow in the forecast.

I'm so cozy...

I can bearly stand it!

This morning I tortured my sons with text messages. That was fun for awhile.

Until my oldest suggested...

And with that, I thought of baking and blogging!


I recently re-organized my recipes. I spent an entire weekend removing recipes from the old photo albums that I had them in. Those albums were in rough shape from years and years of use. I finally organized them into new binders. I use that term "new" loosely.

Do you know how difficult it is these days to find regular photo albums with three ring binders? Well, they come in pretty handy, bub, especially when you want to shift the pages around.

Benny's to the rescue! Good ol' Benny's. I bought the last of their stock which they probably had on their shelves since "19-ot-9" as my stepfather would say.


Here are my beautiful recipe files - all neatly categorized.

And in album number 3, the first recipe is...

Friendship Starter

There was a time in my life when I was totally obsessed with Friendship Bread. I kept that starter going for months. I made all kinds of variations... orange, lemon, date, cinnamon... you name it!

I remember my sister Dottie saying to me, "Be done with it already! Just use the whole batch and finish it up!"

And so I did.


Why do I listen to people?

Friendship Starter

1 (.25 oz) pkg. active dry yeast

¼ c. warm water (110 degrees F)

3 c. all-purpose flour

3 c. granulated sugar 

3 c. milk

(Today you will be using only 1 cup each of flour, sugar and milk. The remaining cups of flour, sugar and milk will be used over the next 9 days.)

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand 10 minutes. In a 2 quart glass, plastic, or ceramic bowl (do not use metal), combine 1 c. flour and 1 c. sugar. 

Mix thoroughly or flour will lump when milk is added. 

Slowly stir in 1 cup milk and the dissolved yeast mixture. 

Leave loosely covered at room temperature.

Consider this Day 1 of the 10 day cycle. 

On days 2-4, stir starter with spoon.

Day 5 – stir in 1 c. flour, 1 c. sugar and 1 c. milk.

Days 6-9, stir only.

Day 10 – stir in 1 c. flour, 1 c. sugar, and 1 c. milk. 

Remove 1 c. batter (considered "starter") to make your first bread. Give 2 cups of starter to friends along with this recipe. Store the remaining 1 cup starter in a container in the refrigerator, or begin the 10 day process all over again with one cup of starter and begin with day 2 to make even more starter!

You can freeze the starter in 1 cup measures for later use. Frozen starter will take at least 3 hours to thaw at room temperature.

This is the basic recipe using your starter to make bread. You can add grated lemon or orange rind, etc. to vary the flavor.

Friendship Bread

1 c. starter

2/3 c. vegetable oil

3 eggs

2 c. flour

1 c. sugar

½ tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 2 9x5 loaf pans. In large bowl, combine starter with oil, sugar, vanilla and eggs.  Mix flour, salt, baking powder, etc. Add to batter and mix well. Pour into pans. Bake 50-60 minutes. Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes, remove from pans, and let cool completely.

You can add grated orange, walnuts, dates, whatever you like. Experiment!

Here’s another recipe using your starter if you don't want to venture off experimenting just yet.

Apple Walnut Friendship Bread

2 c. flour

1 c. sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

1 c. starter

3 eggs

2/3 c. oil

1 tsp. vanilla

½ c. chopped walnuts

2 apples, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 2 9x5 pans. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and set aside. In large bowl, stir together the starter, eggs, oil and vanilla. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until just blended. Stir in nuts and apples. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes. Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes, remove from pans, and let cool completely.