Friendship Bread~ Renae Brabham

I was looking through an old recipe book and saw the recipe for friendship bread starter.  I had to laugh.  I have received the starter twice, I dutifully accepted the baggie of bubbly dough with fake smiles and an insincere thank you. The sensation was likened to that of receiving a chain letter. If you stick around long enough you are bound to get one.

A more modern interpretation of a chain letter would be the annoying social media situation of this post "If you really love Jesus, your sister or brother, share this with 10 friends in the next hour, see what happens"

Neither of the starters that I received were from friends, actually they gave the gift to me rather sheepishly as if they themselves had been dumped upon. The process is similar to re-gifting,just pass off a gift that you don't really want to someone it won't really matter to.

But...with the leavened bread starter, the recipient has to actually work the dough starter for a week or so into 4 batches. After which time, you are going to sheepishly walk up to someone and do the same as my "friends" did.
So anyway, there it sat, A sloppy glob gurgling on my desk with a worn instruction sheet on how I am supposed to "Love on it and others"
I thought seriously of a one handed swoop into the garbage can, no looking back. But, killing a starter. I mean, there is something about the activity in that bag that makes you feel like you would if you killed a lady bug or a small marsupial.

So... I took the starter home and followed the instructions.  Add a cup of this one day, a cup of this another, knead 20 times a day and then divvy it up into 4 bags. Ok, so now it's day 7 or 8 or something like that and I am anticipating the end of this process. I have my zip locks on the counter.Let's see, one bag I keep to re-start the whole process and the other I bake. Two bags are left. Now it's time to pick the lucky recipients. One was a co-worker "friend."  The guilt got the best of me after passing that one off so I decided to put a little more effort into it for the next offering. I thought of the pastors wife that worked with me in retail. I walked up to her and held it out, she threw both hands up like it was kryptonite and proceeded to tell me she didn't have time for that %#&t!
So I found another associate "friend" and handed it to her. I felt like the burden of the bread had been lifted. I concluded that if I were ever approached again, I would pull the sweet little pastors wife's two hand show out on them. And so it was for about 5 years.

And then, one Christmas a dear friend, an older lady that I cared for deeply, gave me the most precious gift. My friend knew the story of my previous starter experiences.  I had unexpected company late one evening. I opened the door and my friends daughter walked in wishing us a Merry Christmas placing a weighty solid package in my hand. The card read. "This cake was baked from a thirty-seven year old ~Friendship Bread Starter~ a family starter. I hope you enjoy it." Part of me didn't even want to eat it, but that passed quickly. The aroma, the richness and the beauty of that bread is forever etched in my mind.

I am here to tell you that I have never, and would venture to say, will ever eat another bite of bread while I am on this earth as good as that cake. So many things had to come together for that bread to be the best.  The quality of the ingredients, the time and care that was kneaded into the starter, for seven years to boot!, and finally the continuity, doing what we need to do each day, even when we don't want to. These are the things that make a bread like the one I was gifted the best I have ever had. A true Friendship bread. And aren't these the same ingredients that are in our true friendship's?

Unleavened bread has no past. No starter to pull from. No history to pass down. Dough without leaven represents haste, a break with the past, an absence of extra flavor, simplicity, inactivity, powerlessness and a lack of labor.
I am richly blessed with wonderful friends, with leavened bread. Our bread is good. We pull from the past, keep it tended and keep the starter alive.