Friendship bread

My neighbor upstairs gave me her starter for Amish friendship bread because she and her husband and child were going on vacation, so last night I went out and spent a bunch of money buying little things like measuring spoons (yes, I'm still outfitting my new place--probably will be for a while) and this morning I dutifully made the bread. I was expecting it to take about an hour and a half (half an hour to mix, an hour to bake), which was really only sort of okay (I had to make a CV to send in with a proposal and both were due today), but I started at about 7:30 this morning and thought that would give me plenty of time. So, I mixed up the batter and then realized I didn't have any crisco or pam to grease my bread pans. Grr. I was just going to walk over to the grocery store quickly and buy crisco, but on the way passed a yard sale where they had a stool I was very much interested in (stools are amazingly expensive, and the chair I have is rediculously short for my table). Since I live in the world of the cashless, I had, you guessed it, no cash. The lady wasn't going to take a cheque, so I went home, grabbed my checkbook, drove to the grocery store hoping they would take an out of state cheque and give me cash back, found out they would (YES!), got money, and went back to the yard sale, where the stool was still waiting. The three ladies were all very nice, and I stood around and talked to them for a while, completely forgetting about both my bread and my waiting CV, and ended up buying the stool, two books (Shel Silverstein's "A light in the Attic" and "The Giving Tree", each for $1--score!), and a cool set of stacking toys with frogs on them.

I finally got home and baked the bread. by this time it was oh, about 10:30 or so. After an hour of baking, I tested the bread to see if it was done. It wasn't so I let it go for another 15 minutes (it was REALLY not done) and tested again. Still not done. 10 minutes after that, I gave it another five, and decided the moist crumbs that came out on the toothpick meant it was probably okay. So, I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool. It sort of fell a bit in the middle, but that's not all that unusual for quick breads, right? I tried very to turn the bread out onto a cooling rack, but it wouldn't budge, so I tried gently loosening the sides with a knife. Still no luck. So, then I turned it over and started banging on the bottom of the pan (always a good choice, no?) and finally got it to move. Or, perhaps more accurately, I got the middle of the bread to move. The part of the bread that was still gooey and underdone, because, as it turns out, the hour and a half of baking hadn't actually cooked the thing. So, now I have pieces of Amish friendship bread, pried oh so indelicately from the non-stick pan, all over my kitchen counter.

Anyone want to be my friend?