Amish Terrorist Bread

July 30, 2008

You are looking at a pair of freshly baked loaves of Amish friendship terrorist bread (ATB).

How dare I suggest that anything the Amish create be considered terrorism? Let me explain.

First, a friend plants the seed by giving you a bag of goo-like bread starter and instructions.  When my friend Ms. Jeley gave the starter to me, I asked about the goo’s origins.  Her response? “It’s a secret, even I do not know where it came from, I just followed the instructions.”    See, it already sounds like a carbohydrate fueled plot of some sort.

The instructions are pretty clear. On days 1-5: knead the bread starter. On day 6 - add flour, sugar and milk.  In the following days 7-9, the starter begins to take on a life of it’s own.  The first bag I had, “jumped” off my pantry shelf and onto the floor.  Obviously up to something.  This bag also produced a tremendous amount of gas, and threatened to explode if the pressure was not released from the ziplock bag.

Here’s where the starter starts to take over.  You spend a lot of time wondering if the bag has attempted another dive off the shelf, or worse, exploded and covered half your your pantry in smelly, sticky, fermented, Amish goo.  On several occassions I was forced to rush home and diffuse this device of evil before it destroyed my kitchen.

Finally on day 10, you bake.  For fear of retaliation, I won’t go into the specifics of the recipe — hell, I really should not be posting this so publically — but this is the heart of the Amish terrorist bread plot.  Before you add the remaining ingredients to your bread, you add additional flour, sugar, and milk to your single starter to create 4 new starters; one for you, and 3 for your own recruits.

While I had my own tasty zucchini, chocolate chip, walnut bread to enjoy, I had to find others to infect spread the message.

For the most recent batch of starter I had, I was able to pawn it off on two couples. It’s hard to successfully market an bread-based multi-level terrorist plot when you keep referring to the starting catalyst as “goo.”  It neither encourages participation or that the bread is even edible (It is delicious, trust me.).

So I’m thoroughly entrenched at this point. Spreading the bread-bomb, three starters at a time.  It’s great post workout food. I will say that.  It’s pretty simple to follow the instructions, and the recipe is fairly flexible.

But you have to keep giving it away.  If only rabbits baked –they multiply at the same rate as the bread, so the math works.  At this point, I’m basically scared to give it to anyone else, for fear that I could find 100 ziplock bags of goo chock full of air at my doorstep on Day 10.  And they’re rigged to explode when I open the door, a cup of coffee in one hand, and a big hunk of ATB in the other.

Please contact me if you are interested in your own ATB starter.

Posted by seth | Filed Under Food, Blog 

Comments

3 Responses to “Amish Terrorist Bread”

  1. Ms. Jeley on July 30th, 2008 8:45 pm

    Love the post! Of course, I was the “friend” who recruited Seth with the yummy goo. Their is something definitely fiendish about the four bags that appear every 10 days. :-)

  2. seth on July 30th, 2008 9:43 pm

    @ Ms. Jeley: Thx for the starter, and the comment. We have an ATB hack that eliminates the other starter bags and doubles the recipe if you are interested.

  3. (Aunt) Diane on August 7th, 2008 2:58 pm

    Oh, Seth! What a hysterical narrative on the life of a person who has custody of friendship bread starter! Your Grandmother Nickerson gave some to me many moons ago and try as I might, I never was able to share enough of my starter! I’m sure she’s chuckling about your adventure. Look out for the Friendship Fruit… it’s a really sticky mess, too!

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