Amish Friendship Bread--is the instant pudding necessary?

[jamoehope]

I made some Amish Friendship Bread a few times. Here is the general recipe for those who are not familiar with it. This is part of the recipe for when preparing the yeast mixture to bake:

Add to the mixture:

1 cup oil (or 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup applesauce)
1/2 cup milk
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 - (5.1 oz) box instant vanilla pudding
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup nuts

The first time I used the instant vanilla pudding as requested and though I liked the bread, it was too much like a cake to me. I tried omitting the pudding in another batch of the Amish Friendship Bread and used only applesauce in place of the oil. This time the bread turned out too dry (either because of the lack or oil or the pudding). Is the pudding necessary to keep the bread moist? Or can something else be substituted? I'm trying to make a lower fat and lower sugar version.

Thanks!

Jamie

 

[Alix]

Buy a box of diet vanilla pudding. And yes it is necessary in the recipe. I think the diet pudding thing would solve your problem. And you likely should stick with subbing only 1/2 the fat with applesauce. It does, as you noticed, tend to dry out your baking rather badly.

 

[David Cottrell]

Yes, indeedie - Amish Friendship Bread is as you have it in the recipe. Of course you might come up with something else that is good. but it would be something else. Good idea for diet vanilla pudding and going with the 1/2 oil and 1/2 applesauce. That should get you as close to your goal as possible. Happy Baking!

 

[jasonr]

I was pretty skeptical that the Amish would use instant vanilla pudding powder in one of their traditional recipes. I found the following information online:

This is more than a recipe - it's a way of thinking. In our hi-tech world almost everything comes prepackaged and designed for instant gratification. So where does a recipe that takes ten days to make fit in? Maybe it's a touch stone to our past - to those days not so very long ago when everything we did took time and where a bread that took 10 days to make was not as extraordinary as it seems today.


I can't get over the irony of this statement. Instant vanilla pudding powder indeed...

 

[Hungry]

Amish Bread

Here is a few recipes using the Amish Strter.
Amish Friendship Bread Variations: variations on the basic Amish Friendship Bread recipe.

Charlie