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Many people are now into buying candles that smell like bread and even air freshener that smells like bread! Anything to get that "home" feel. What surprises me the most is that after doing the math, it is much cheaper and much more rewarding to just make your own bread! Even bread machines can get expensive, unless you are a single mom and just have fewer options. The only modern day draw back I see in making bread in general is the outrageous price of yeast! Thankfully one of my aunts in upstate New York taught me about using a "starter" preparation. I was amazed! Once you buy the yeast and prepare your starter just right, you need not buy any more type of leavening! The starter stays in your refrigerator indefinitely as long as you take care of it! Passing the starter it out to friends as a holiday gift is also a very loving thought! Supplying them with instructions, no doubt. When I learned of this I had to write it all down. A few times! This is more than a recipe - it's a way of thinking. In our hi-tech world almost everything comes prepackaged and designed for instant gratification. So where does a recipe that takes ten days to make fit in? Maybe it's a touch stone to our past - to those days not so very long ago when everything we did took time and where a bread that took 10 days to make was not as extraordinary as it seems today. This particular recipe comes to us from Mrs. Norma Condon of Los Angeles. Amish Friendship Bread is a great bread for the holidays. "When you've made your bread, you can give your friends a sample and the starter that made it!" For serious bread makers this saves a ton of money on buying yeast! Then your friends can make their own and pass it along to their friends. This is why the bread is called "friendship bread". It makes a great homemade birthday and Christmas present. Church groups and hospitals have spread a lot of love and cheer by making Amish Friendship Bread for their members. Many people make it regularly just because it tastes so good! Amish Friendship Bread is a genuine starter bread. If you know someone with a starter, you are in luck. For those of you without access to a starter, we've done our research and found a great option. It's a special starter in powder form that can be activated with flour and water; it's safe, very inexpensive and we can send it to you. Martha White 2001 The Recipe
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