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, each time I dutifully accepted the baggie of bubbly dough with fake smiles and an insincere thank you. It was like receiving a chain letter. If you stick around long enough, you're bound to get one. (The more modern interpretation of a chain letter, of course, being the annoying social media post, "If you really love Jesus, your sister, or brother, wife, husband., share this with 10 friends in the next hour, see what happens...")
Back to the bread: Neither of the starters I received were from friends. They were given to me rather sheepishly, as if they themselves had been dumped upon. I prefer actual re-gifting. You just pass off a gift that you don't really want to someone it won't really matter to. The end. But with a leavened bread starter, the recipient has to actually work the dough starter for a week or so into four batches. After which, you 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-hand swoop into the garbage can, no looking back. But, killing a starter?
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 divy it up into four bags. Okay, so now it's day seven or eight or something like that, and I am anticipating the end of this process. I have my zip locks on the counter. One 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 coworker "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 pastor's wife who 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 pastor's wife's act on them. And so it was for about five years.
And then, one Christmas a dear friend—an older lady who I cared for deeply—received a 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 friend's daughter walked in wishing us a Merry Christmas and placing a weighty solid package in my hand. The card read, "This cake was baked from a seven-year-old "Friendship Bread Starter" from a real friend. 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 it is forever etched in my mind.
I am here to tell you that I have never, and will venture to say 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 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 friendships?
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.
