Amish Friendship Breads: Cornbread and Pan de Nueces

Green Chili and Cumin Cornbread

When enchanting Sig of LiveToEat emailed and asked me if I am willing to receive the Amish Friendship Bread starter from her, I was thrilled and nervous all in one go! Thrilled because I adore Sig and her blog and for her to reach out to little ol' me to share the love of the Amish bread was beyond comprehension. I was nervous about the whole thing because I have yet to bake a bread, I have baked many cakes, muffins and desserts but no breads with yeast and I had no clue how to begin. We exchanged a couple of emails and I jokingly told her that its probably easier for me to train for a triathlon than handle mashing and nurturing this friendship bread but I would give it a go! So can you believe my utter surprise when the box arrived with a ziploc bag of funny yeasty smelling starter plus a gorgeous book on making bread?! Sig, in all her glorious generosity sent me the starter and a bread book called "Bread - from sourdough to rye" by Linda Collister! I was stunned to bits and of course I owe it to Sig to try out a recipe from that book for the Amish bread.

I got the starter on day 3 and religiously followed the instructions on mashing, releasing air and adding ingredients on the set days. I also wanted to pass on the favor of sending the lovely starter to other bloggers and started contacting a couple of folks to see if they could. Two of my three recipients are out of town at the moment so I decided to save one portion of the starter so I can send it to them in a few days so instead of baking just one portion size of the starter, I had 3 portions to experiment with and this post I will share the outcomes of all three.

I am sure there are plenty of other bloggers who read cookbooks as their bedtime reading and after two nights of reading "Bread" I decided to try both a savory and a sweet recipe from the book for my trials. Both recipes I chose don't use yeast as the leavening agent because a) I didn't have the time it needed to rise etc b) I am still chicken about using yeast. I promise my next batch in a week I will attempt the yeast option but for now, I chose two very simple but tasty sounding recipes. Those of you who haven't read Bread or any other books by Linda Collister, its really easy reading, loads of good information on various types of flours for bread making and step by step pictorial instructions for bread dunces like me! Its a perfect bread book. Thank you again SIG. My forever gratitude for your kind and sweet gesture.

After a few minutes of trying to figure out how to incorporate the Amish starter into the recipes, a little math light bulb went off in my head - use recipes with flour, milk, sugar and subtract 1/3 from what the recipes calls for as 1 cup of Amish Bread Starter is 1/3 Milk, 1/3 Sugar and 1/3 Flour mixture. DUH!

The bread book has a recipe for Two Pepper Cornbread but I used a variant recipe listed under it with Green Chillies and Cumin for a wonderfully mildly spicy and fragrant cornbread.

Green Chili and Cumin Cornbread from "Bread" by Linda Collister; adapted to use with the Amish Bread Starter

• 1 1/4 Cups Course Yellow Cornmeal
• 2/3 Cup All-purpose flour (if you dont have starter use 1 cup)
• 1/2 Teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt
• 1 small green chili seeded and finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon lightly toasted cumin seeds
• 2 pinches ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 large egg
• 2/3 cup milk (1 cup if you don't have starter)
• 1 1/4 cups corn kernels, fresh or frozen and thawed

Greased 8 inch square cake pan or I used 3 small rectangular bread pans (~3 inches x 2 inches)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 400 degree F

Put all the dry ingredients flour, salt, cornmeal, cumin seeds, cumin powder and baking powder into a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly. Make a well in the center.

Combine eggs, milk and amish starter in a non-metallic bowl and stir together with a wooden spatula. Stir gently into the coarse-looking batter - VERY IMPORTANT (cuz I screwed up a bit) DO NOT Overmix or beat or cornbread will be tough. Briefly stir in the corn, then spoon into a prepared pan.

Bake in a preheated oven for about 18 minutes or until firm and lightly golden. Turn out into a bread board, cut into large squares and eat warm. If not eating immediately cool on a wire rack but consume in 24 hours.

Warm Chili Cornbread out of the oven...
** Notes about my cornbread:

• I think I mixed the batter one too many times because it was not as moist as I wanted it. The taste was phenomenal and adding a dab of butter definitely improved the moisture/toughness of the bread. The added 1/3 sup sugar from the Amish starter gave the cornbread a nice sweet compliment to the corn and hint of spiciness from the chili. It was not overpoweringly sweet. It was perfect.
• The book has the main recipe which includes 1/2 teaspoon crushed black peppercorns plus 12 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes instead of the green chili and cumin seeds. You can make it like that for a spicier cornbread.
• We ate our cornbread with butter from the oven as well as dunking into spicy sambhar the next day. It was super yummy with sambhar too!

Pan de nueces (walnut bread on the right) plus Banana Bread cooling down

The second recipe I tried from the "Bread" book was pan de nueces a sweet, unyeasted loaf from Spain rich with toasted walnuts and walnut oil. This recipe called for the right ingredients I had at home plus the no yeast called out to me. I took the same recipe (ingredients and proportions) and created a third bread with banana and no walnuts. A completely different bread with variant texture and moisture. The Walnut bread was nutty, sweet and a perfect hint of amish starter sourness (not at all overwhelming but you can taste it). The banana bread was super moist (a little too much in some ways for me), intensely sweet and aromatic with the banana flavors. Both these sweet breads tasted best the next day with a strong cup of coffee.

Pan de nueces

• 2 cups shelled and chopped walnuts (for banana bread skip nuts and add one banana)
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon walnut oil
• 2/3 cup sugar (1 cup if no amish starter is used)
• 1 large egg, slightly beaten
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• a good pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 cup milk (1 1/8 cup milk if no starter)

1 loaf pan, 9x5x3 inches, greased and lined with baking parchment ( i didn't line mine and it was fine)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degree F

Put walnuts into a roasting pan or baking dish and toast till lightly brown (it took me only 8 minutes as mine were chopped, a bit longer if you have whole walnuts). Let it cool and coarsely chop if you roasted whole walnuts.

Cream the butter, oil, sugar in a mixing bowl and work in the egg, beat the mixture thoroughly for 1 minute and then mix in the amish starter (again in a non-metallic container/spatula). Add the nuts for the pan de nueces or banana for the banana bread. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into the bowl, then add milk. Stir well to make a sloppy batter.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Turn out onto a wire rack and let it cool. Wrap and keep for 1 day before slicing ( i couldn't wait and the results show, the bread needs a day to firm up!). Best eaten within 5 days and can be frozen for up to a month.

Sliced banana bread and pan de nueces waiting to be eaten

** Notes about my banana and pan de nueces bread making:

• Follow the instructions on the walnut bread and wait to slice the next day, if you try to slice the same day its too soft/crumbly. But it tasted great fresh out of the oven too! Who can wait?!
• The banana bread was too moist, I would skip the egg in the recipe next time and try just the banana with the rest of the ingredients as the milk and banana gave it the right amount of moisture.
• The walnut bread is extremely nutty (2 cups of nuts!!) so if you are not a big walnut fan, this bread is not for you!
  

Amish Friendship Bread - This particular thread was started by Mandira of Ahaar and you can find more details on Amish Friendship Starter here, here and here.

The rules for the Amish friendship starter bread states that you have to use 1 portion of the starter, share 3 others with friends and can keep one portion to keep making more breads. So with the spirit of the Amish Friendship starter, I am sending the starter to:

• Kanchana, of MarriedtoaDesi.com (it might be a joint effort in the Kanchana/Shankar household I think!?)
• Miss. Sexy & Sultry Jaden of Steamykitchen.com fame (who is in China at the moment and will get her starter latter part of next week)
• Kay at One Bite at a Time (Kay is in India at the moment and she will receive her starter latter part of next week too!)

So dear friends, I hope you enjoy experimenting with the starter as much as I did and hopefully you are not scared/nervous either!