I was given a sour dough starter by a friend lately. It had a piece of paper attached with directions on how to care for the starter and a recipe for “Amish Friendship Bread”. I never thought something so simple could cause such trauma in my life.

I had to think about dealing with it every day. Day 1 smoosh bag. Day 2 smoosh bag. Day 3 smoosh bag. When day ten arrived I had built so much excitement about baking the bread that I felt like a little kid. The bread was wonderful but then I had four bags of starter to hand out to friends. No problem, I have 3 friends that like to bake. Then came the second round. I was a little busy and forgot to smoosh the bag a couple days. I was terrified. What if I killed the starter? Would I be able to get more? Would it mean that I was a bad person or a domestic failure? It seemed to survive my neglect. Then came, the day to bake the bread.

I had been busy with work and was not prepared to bake. It was 95 degrees in my kitchen, the store closed in five minutes and I was missing three key ingredients. So I rushed to the store and grabbed the things I needed. When I got back to the house the kitchen was even hotter due to the preheating oven. Then I realized that my husband had used the last egg. So I was off in the car again, hoping that the local convenience store had eggs.

Since it was an incredibly hot day everyone in town was at the convenience store getting a cold treat. After being in line for twenty minutes, I rushed home with my precious two-dollar eggs. Now my kitchen was almost unbearable. I hurried and threw the ingredients in and began stirring. The mixture seemed runny so I double-checked my recipe. Low and behold, I had added too much milk. I didn’t really care much at this point and just figured to add time to the cooking.

That time went from one hour to almost two before the knife came out clean. By this time it was way past my bedtime so I just took out the bread and left it in the pan for morning. When I got up the next day and removed the loaves from the pans, they were really moist. My husband loves this bread and cut into it right away. The first comment was “This seems a little darker than last time”. At that point it was all I could do to not throw it at him. After I relaxed and ate a slice myself I turned to my counter and there it was. Four zip lock bags with starter in it.

A good friend of mine, who I had given one of my other starters to, referred to it as a Herman. It was alive after all and thus deserved a name. So I stood staring at “Herman” seriously thinking that it might be ok to just let it die. The guilt got me. I feel a certain sense of responsibility. This was a living gift that was given to me. Maybe the Amish friendship bread was designed as a test. A test of our friends and a test of our ability to stick with something, even something as simple as a sour dough started.

Soooo, I photocopied three sets of the directions, labeled the bags and headed out my door in search of three more people that I could inflict this “Gift” on. Yes I kept one bag for myself, so maybe I passed the test.