Amish Friendship Bread Recipe, Starter Recipe & Gifting Printable

Amish Friendship Bread recipe is perfect to share with friends. Now you can make your own with this Friendship bread starter recipe & free printable for giving as a gift!

The other day I was looking through my past emails when I came across an email I had sent my stepmother with an Amish Friendship Bread recipe as well as a Friendship Bread starter recipe. I realized I hadn’t made any in years and years!

What is Amish friendship bread?

If you aren’t familiar, Amish Friendship Bread is a sweet bread that you make off a sourdough starter.

The starter is “fed” and kept for ten days, then divided into four portions, three of which you can gift to friends and one you use to bake the most heavenly cinnamon sugared bread! Then your friends can pass along the Amish Friendship Bread recipe to their friends and so on and so on indefinitely.

When I was newly married I would receive a starter a couple of times a year from friends and neighbors and always enjoyed it. Sometimes, though, you want to make this delicious bread and you need to create your own starter if no one you know has some on hand.

I decided to share the starter recipe with you all along with printable instructions and the Amish Friendship Bread recipe gifting sheet you can use to pass it along to friends and family.

Starter ingredients

• dry yeast
• warm water
• all-purpose flour
• sugar
• milk

Step by step starter

1. Dissolve yeast int warm water and let it sit 10 minutes.
2. Combine flour and sugar and mix well.
3. Add milk, then yeast mixture and allow to sit until bubbly.
4. Add starter to a plastic gallon bag.
5. Follow the instructions on the printable. You can also use a permanent marker to write the instructions on the bag for easy reference. You will squeeze the bag daily days 2-4, feed it day 5, squeeze again days 6-9.
6. On day 10 feed it, divide it, and make your delicious bread!

Tips for best results

• Always use nonmetal bowls and utensils for the sourdough starter, it is acidic and can breakdown the metal
• You can freeze Amish Friendship Bread by wrapping it tightly in plastic wrap or foil and placing in a heavy-duty freezer bag. Freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight at room temperature.

When I gifted this set of starter I rolled the plastic bags and put them in standard sized mason jars (with these cute red tops!) It’s important your starter doesn’t touch metal because of the chemical reaction it will cause so don’t gift in the jar without using the plastic bag!

Printable card for gifting

I print mine on 80lb cardstock for durability but you can easily print on standard paper as well. You could also laminate it too!

Variations

• add chocolate chips, chopped nuts, dried cranberries, butterscotch chips, raisins, etc
• bake as muffins by reducing the baking time to 25-35 minutes
• omit pudding mix for a slightly different flavor

Have you tried an Amish Friendship Bread recipe, there are actually quite a few variations out there. If yours is different than mine I’d love for you to share it in the comments so we can all try it!

You might also like these delicious bread recipes:

• Apple Cinnamon Bread
• Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
• Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bread

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