What is the point of a "Friendship Bread" starter?
Recently I started a "Starter" for Friendship Bread with some active (non wild) yeast. I thought it would be a good way to keep an active culture of yeast around in general and get some nice cake / breads too. However as i've been going though recipes paired with the starter for cakes, cookies, and muffins. I've noticed that all the leavening is coming from other means. So that becomes the crux of my question. If not for leavening, what value does a friendship bread starter provide?
Best Answer
I see Amish Friendship Bread recipes that create a starter with dry active yeast, but also notice that once they are active, they are kept active by feeding with flour, water, and frequently sugar. After the first addition of active yeast at the creation, no further dry active yeast is added, from what I can tell. This is a similar process to creating a sourdough, however, with sourdough, no dry active yeast is used. Anyway, over time, the starter you've created will pick up lactic acid bacteria, and perhaps other strains of yeast. The pH of the starter will become more acidic. So, in addition to leavening, the starter adds flavor to the recipe and adds acidity to your recipe. Baking soda and powder also help leavening, but might be more important here to preserve the correct level of acidity and encourage browning in the final formula. Baking soda helps keep acidity in balance, particularly when used with baking powder (one can use less soda). The proper alkalinity is also important to encourage browning.
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What is the purpose of a bread starter?
A bread starter is the base for many artisan breads, including sourdough and Amish Friendship Bread. It uses naturally occurring wild yeast as a leavening agent, lending a distinct flavor and texture to the bread that cannot be replicated by commercially harvested yeast.What is the point of Amish Friendship Bread?
Amish Friendship Bread is all about friendships and community. It's about connection. It's about fun. It's about nurturing other people, including yourself.When can you use Friendship Bread starter?
The reason the recipe asks you to wait for 10 days is so the starter (comprised of flour, milk, sugar, yeast) has a chance to get robust and ferment. Developing a healthy Amish Friendship Bread starter takes time, but once you have a starter established (after at least one 10-day round), you can bake anytime.What do I do with sourdough starter from a friend?
You can either split your starter into a new jar for your friend and feed both as normal ( about 100g of starter and 100g each of water and flour) or spilt some off and give them the discard to feed up. Generally, you don't need more than about 50g of starter to pass on to really get a new starter going.Amish Friendship Bread Recipe + How to make Starter
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Answer 2
It is there for taste.
The starter you describe is simply a kind of preferment. Since active yeast is added, and maintained overtime, I expect it will have a very strong yeasty-sourdoughy taste, much more so than other preferments made without a culture, or ones that are fermented for short times.
The bread recipes itself (the ones I found online) are for quickbreads, and the leavening comes from the chemical leaveners in them. Even if the starter would have a leavening capability (which I don't know, since I haven't handled it - it could be highly overfermented) it wouldn't be able to develop any of it in a quickbread recipe.
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