The Ultimate Pyramid Scam

I got sucked in badly this time. It was the ultimate pyramid and I thought I was smarter than that. In a moment of weakness, I got talked into it and now I can't get out. It didn't come in the form of a chain letter; I wasn't invited to someone's house for a plan that they "just wanted to show me." Nope, nothing like that. This came to me from my daughter in an innocent little zip-lock bag. It's called "friendship" bread and supposedly it comes from the Amish.

Apparently you let this bag of goo sit on your counter for 10 days before you bake it. The trick is that you have to do things to it while it sits there. You've got to squeeze and caress the bag every day, add special ingredients to it on special days, and burp it occasionaly. Heck, I'm not sure I even took care of my kids that well.

I question everything about the process. On the fifth day I was advised to add milk without refrigerating it. Okay, so if this pyramid works like they say it does with its implied origins, there might be drops of milk in that bag that date back to the early nineteen hundreds. That's some fermentation!

After ten days of serious babysitting, I thought I was ready to make up the bread--not so fast! After adding more ingredients, the instructions indicated that I was supposed to remove four cups of the mixture and put each into a zip-lock bag; three of them were to be distributed to my friends and one was to be saved for myself as another starter.

But, I didn't want to give it to my friends--I'm not that good at selling the idea to them. Just because it's called "friendship" bread doesn't mean that your friends want to participate. Personally, I think that the name was designed to dupe innocent people (kind of like "Herman the 'friendly' coffee cake" that I remember going around about 25 years ago.) Besides, a recipe that quadruples every 10 days scares me a little. So I decided to beat the system. I did all the math and decided to make up my own batch along with some of the batches that should have been distributed to others.

My kitchen looks like a war zone. Now I've got six loaves of the stuff lined up on the counter. Oh, and by the way, it comes with special strange instructions like; do not use a metal bowl or spoon. I accidently touched a metal fork to it when I had it in the pan and thought it would blow up in my face. I'm not much of a baker, but I've never feared for my life like I did tonight.

Now that it's done it tastes okay, but my daughter's batch tasted better; I'm pretty sure it's because she got the Martha Stewart genes from her dad. (She was curious about the addition of instant vanilla pudding--not exactly "Amish.") So, if you come to my house during the next week or so, I just might serve some to you. Don't tell me that you like it because, guess what? I've got one starter bag sitting on my counter. In ten days I just might be sharing it with you.