Finally made some Amish friendship bread today. (You have to wait 10 days from the time you get the "start" from someone else.) It's deee-licious!!

So, here's my dilemma. I don't want to keep giving so much of it away. See, you add stuff after a while and then divide into 5 parts - one to bake, one to keep yourself to start over and 4 to give to your friends.

Is there a way to tweak the recipe so I can bake everything except keep the one "start" for myself?

I'd like to keep this going all summer/fall if I can... we love it. It's almost like a sourdough thing cuz you don't need yeast, huh?

Also, can you tweak the recipe to add applesauce in place of the oil? We're going to have lots of apples, I think, and I want to make applesauce for baking...