Pecan Peach Amish Friendship Bread

Normally I'm not one to fall prey to those "send this email to seven people or you'll have bad luck for seven years" hoxes, but when my friend Mandy sent me an email asking me if I wanted a bag of Amish Friendship Bread Starter, I couldn't resist. It had been something I'd always wanted to try but never had the opportunity.
If you're new to the whole idea to chain-mail baking, allow me to enlighten you: Basically Amish Friendship Bread is a made with a sourdough starter that takes ten days to make, from start to finish. At the end of the ten-day period, you'll be left with approximately 6 cups of starter, four cups of which are to be given away and two for you to make something yummy. There are a limitless treats you can make the starter, everything from a basic cinnamon bread to muffins, cookies, cakes, even pancakes and waffles!
I'm not exactly sure why this is called Amish Friendship Bread. Although I've never actually spent time in an Amish household, I'm pretty sure that they'd shun the idea of boxed instant pudding mix. So in an effort to stay more true to the recipe's namesake, I left it out and opted to use canned peaches and pecans instead. I had reserved the juice from the can of peaches with the intention of making it into a glaze to pour over my finished bread, but after my family and I tasted the it, we decided that it didn't need it. It was pretty flavorful all by itself!

If you decide you'd like to try it, you can find instructions for making the starter on Allrecipes.com. Please note: On days six through nine, be sure to let the air out at least once or twice a day. My bag of starter literally inflated to the point where it looked like a pillow sitting on my kitchen counter. I've read some horror stories about how it can explode and ooze sticky, smelly batter all over your kitchen if you don't take the time to squeeze the air out of the bag. Oh and apparently dogs like the way it smells too! I gave one of my four bags of starter to my friend Nicole and her dog got into it and lapped up the batter.
The recipe I've included below is my variation for Amish Friendship bread - I didn't do anything too crazy or different, I just added a few more instructions to help take the guesswork out of making it. If you're curious what the basic recipe is, or need a printable version of the instructions to include with your bags of starter, you can download it here.

Pecan Peach Amish Friendship Bread
Yield: Each loaf yielded about 15 slices or so.

1/2 cup of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 325F. Mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.

Grease 2 large loaf pans with shortening or Pam with Flour spray. Dust the greased pans with half of cinnamon sugar mixture.

About 2 cups of starter* (or whatever you have left after you've measured out 4 cups to share)
3 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce, at room temperature
1/2 cup milk (full, 2%, or skim will all work okay), at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups all-purpose flour (I prefer to use unbleached)
1 cup of toasted and chopped pecans
1 15 oz can of sliced peaches in light syrup, thoroughly drained and diced

In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, oil, applesauce, milk, and vanilla until well combined (you can use a hand mixture for this step) and add it to the starter. Using a hand mixer or spoon, mix until all the ingredients are well incorporated.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, kosher salt, and flour. Add it to the starter batter and continue to mix on medium speed until it's well combined and no pockets of dry ingredients are visible.

Mix in the pecans and peaches with a wooden spoon until they are well distributed.

Pour the batter evenly into the 2 pans and sprinkle with the remaining sugar mixture over the top.

Bake both pans together in the oven 60 to 75 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of bread comes out clean. Cool until bread loosens from pan evenly (about 10 minutes). Remove from the pan and either eat it while it's warm or let it cool on a wire rack.