Amish Friendship Bits

When I was first married I was given my first bag of Amish Friendship Bread. For about 5 months I was a bread making fiend. We ate this stuff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and then wondered why we gained weight). I hadn't thought about this bread for quite a while until Becci sent us this Pinstrosity. 

The Original Pin

http://www.chef-in-training.com/2012/01/amish-friendship-bread-with-printable-version/

Seriously, this stuff is so dang good. If you've never been given a starter bag the link above has directions (at the bottom of the post) to get your own batch started. I know this seems like a lot of work for bread, but it really isn't all that hard and it is SOOOOO yummy. You need to try this stuff. Becci tried it out and had a little trouble. 

The Pinstrosity

She told us, "It would NOT come out of the pan!!! The recipe says to coat the pan in spray then dust with sugar and cinnamon mixture. It turned into cement in the pan! It did taste delicious, though I couldn't wrap it up and give it to the neighbors. :)"

This was a problem I had early on when I first started making this bread. I figured out a few tricks though that helped. 

• Instead of using baking spray to grease the pans, I would use shortening or butter. Take a paper towel (or your fingers...I just used my fingers) and coat your pan. You don't want a really thick layer but you want to make sure your pan is thoroughly coated. 
• I started increasing the amount of the sugar/cinnamon mixture by half so that I would have extra. This allowed me to get an even thicker coat of the sugar mixture lining the pan. Not only did this help keep the bread from sticking to the pan, but it made it extra yummy!
• I let the bread cool for about 10-15 minutes (depending on how warm of a day it was). When the bread is a little more cool it will come out of the pan easier. 
• Sometimes I would take the bread out of the oven and put them up-side-down on a cooling rack and let them cool that way. As they cooled gravity did its work and helped the bread to pull away from the pan.