Yeast starter: Oh my housemate, she suffered

One of my former housemates has a common refrain when talking to others about the ways I would be gracious to her, “Oh, my housemate, she suffered.” And this refrain is true for my current housemate who suffered on behalf of the “stoodents”.

As we continued on in the Gospel of Mark, I looked for ways to make the text more tangible and engaging. As we arrived at Mark 8:14-21, the passage about the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod, I realized that the average student these days doesn’t have a practical understanding of how yeast works. So, for the application activity for this exercise, I gave each student a yeast starter so that they could make Amish Friendship Bread. The hope being that they would understand how a little bit of yeast has a large impact in the life of this bread and also that they would be able to extend hospitality by sharing their starters and the breads they would make and that this hospitality would continue to grow and multiply.

In order to get ready for this application activity, I made 4 batches of the yeast starter, much to the dismay of my and my housemates’ nostrils. Let me tell you, these were the longest and smelliest days we encountered, as I lined my sewing table with 4 plastic bowls full of starter and stirred and fed it over the course of 10 days. I tried to convince my housemate we’d eventually go noseblind to the smell, as Febreeze advertisements would have us believe, but no, those ads are full of falsehoods, our whole apartment was engulfed by the odour of the starters and we were aware of every moment of it.

On the one hand I was fascinated by the process and seeing how each day the mixture looked different, it felt like I was reliving my elementary school science experiment days. On the other hand, I couldn’t wait until day 10 when I could divide out the starter and freeze that which I wasn’t using and have our apartment return to its usual non-yeasty aromas.

As day 10 finally arrived, and after divvying up the starter, I made my first loaves of Amish Friendship Bread. I read on a blog somewhere that, “it’s the smelliest process for the most divine bread ever” and sure enough as this bread was baking our apartment filled with its sweet aroma, a welcome change to the scent of the starter. My housemate came home in the midst of my baking extravangza and was pleasantly delighted by the smell. The recipe made 2 loaves, so I brought one to the potluck for the “stoodents” and kept one at home for a party we were hosting later that week. The blog did not lie, once I got to taste the bread, which had called for pudding powder to make it more moist, I could immediately tell it was the most delicious sweet bread I had ever eaten.

I still have some starters in my freezer, if this post has whet your appetite and you’d like to try to make some Amish Friendship Bread, let me know and I’d be happy to send you a starter.