How to Lose Friends in 10 Days: Amish Friendship Bread

What is it about the word "Amish" that makes women jump at anything that has that word printed on it? Hmmm, it's Amish-gotta be good! Amish cheese, Amish furniture, Amish baked goods. Hell, if they sold vibrators with the word "Amish" stamped on them, women would buy up the goddamn things. "For those long, lonely days when Jonas is out raising a barn and you just can't wait."

One of the many things that's just gotta be good because it's Amish is a recipe for something called "Amish Friendship Bread." If you are unfortunate enough to have a friend who is unfortunate enough to have a friend who is unfortunate enough to have a friend who thought it would be a great idea to involve some other poor wretch in something really stupid, you will receive a bag of "starter dough" and then go through a ten-day ritual in which you ultimately create a couple loaves of bread and pass off four bags of starter dough to some other unsuspecting poor wretches. And so the string continues. It's kind of a chain letter except with baked goods.

Recently, my daughter received a bag of starter dough from a friend, but with little interest in doing anything involving ingredients, measurements and a kitchen passed the bag off to my goodhearted wife. And so that's how we gained custody of a bag of gunk along with a page of directions for Amish Friendship Bread.

The first few days are easy enough. On day one, we are instructed to do nothing. I like that-no one has perfected the art of doing nothing as well as I have. Days 2 through 5 require a little more work. The directions say to "mush the bag" each of these days. There is no explanation for what is meant by mush the bag. I suggest to my wife that mushing the bag is an old Amish sexual euphemism and that we are supposed to go knock one off. My wife-ever the killjoy-is certain the Amish would never involve sex in a bread recipe and decides it means "knead the dough." Disappointed, I trudge off to my recliner muttering obscenities and wishing this recipe was called something like, "Playboy Friendship Bread."

Day 6 calls for a little more work, asking that we add flour, sugar and milk to the bag. That's not too bad. The bag of gunk is bigger, but not too big for us to handle. Then it's mush the bag time again on days 7 through 9. At this point, I can't help but think that, had I been able to convince my wife "mush the bag" meant the same thing as "hide the salami," I would be one happy, relaxed dude by now. Instead, by day nine I am wondering why the hell we are doing this.

Then comes day 10-the day we make the bread.

Looking at the directions, it seems this bread requires more ingredients than the formula for napalm. My wife goes through the cupboards and refrigerator to make sure we have everything needed for this fabulous creation. "Flour? Check. Sugar? Check. Cinnamon? Check. Eggs? Check. Plutonium? Check..." In all, there are roughly one thousand different measurements of ingredients required to make a couple loaves of this crap.

After bagging four new starter doughs reserved for friends we don't like a whole lot, the rest of the mushed bag is deposited into a large bowl. I go line-by-line measuring out each ingredient as my wife adds them to the mixture. About half way through, we start to lose interest and decide to take a break, downing a few beers and taking a little nap. Then it's back to it, eventually creating a batter that could double for foundation for a new barn. Poured into bread pans, the combined ingredients are baked in an oven for one hour-enough time for a few more beers.

As we wait for the bread to bake, even my wife wonders why anyone would want to do something that requires this much work. I agree. In this day and age, who wants to spend valuable time that could be used for more important things-like sitting back, drinking beer and watching Jerry Springer?

But of course the answer is that this is an Amish recipe. The Amish specialize in engaging in time-consuming crap so that they don't have the opportunity to stop and think of how miserable their lives are without recliners, beer and bad TV. Raising barns, quilting, milking cows, churning butter and, worst of all, reading the Bible are all things people did in the dark ages to take their minds off the fact that modern technology involved nothing more than a rock and a piece of wood. Today, however, we have everything at our fingertips, so what's the point?

I do have to admit that the bread turned out fine-in fact, it is quite tasty. But I've had other tasty baked goods that didn't require any more work than tearing open a cellophane wrapper. And Hostess® has never had to stamp "Amish" on its products for a guy like me to decide it's time for a couple Twinkies®.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a live and let live kind of guy. If the Amish want to ride around in horse drawn wagons and pretend the year is 1809, so be it-just don't involve me. I embrace modern technology because I have far more important things to do with my time.

As I told my wife the other night in bed, anything that requires more than five minutes of my time just ain't worth doing.