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Banana bread

Felix Intelegando Updated All recipes

This banana bread is one loaf made from two ripe bananas, one egg, 175 g flour and a little melted butter, baked for about 60 minutes at 175 °C. Banana bread has nothing to do with bread – it’s a cake. It tastes good with icing, which also makes you think of cake, but it is just as good sliced and spread with honey.

Banana bread loaf on a white plate with one thick slice cut, showing a soft, light crumb with tiny dark specks, three ripe bananas beside it on a wooden board
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Banana bread loaf on a white plate with one thick slice cut, showing a soft, light crumb with tiny dark specks, three ripe bananas beside it on a wooden board

Recipe

Banana bread

Prep
15 mins
Cook
60 mins
Total
75 mins
Serves
1 loaf

Ingredients

banana bread

Method

  1. Turn on the oven at 175 ° C.
  2. Melt the butter in a pan.
  3. Mash or blend the bananas.
  4. Mix the butter and the bananas together.
  5. Whip eggs and sugar and possibly grains from the half of the vanilla bar together.
  6. Sift flour, baking soda and salt into the egg mixture and stir well.
  7. Turn the banana mixture into the dough and stir well.
  8. Pour the dough into a greased form, or a mold covered with baking paper, or a silicone or teflon form.
  9. Baked the banana bread for approx. 60 minutes until it is puffed up inside the oven. Check if possible with a meat spear. When there is no wet dough on the skewer, the bread is cooked.

Step by step, in pictures

The six stages of the recipe, from melting the butter to testing the baked loaf with a skewer.

  1. Line drawing of a cube of butter melting in a small saucepan on an electric hobMelt the butter
  2. Line drawing of melted butter being poured from a saucepan into a bowl of bananas while a fork mashes themMash the bananas with the butter
  3. Line drawing of a balloon whisk beating a mixture in a bowl, a vanilla pod and a vanilla flower beside itWhisk egg, sugar and vanilla
  4. Line drawing of flour sifting through a fine sieve into an empty mixing bowlSift in the dry ingredients
  5. Line drawing of thick banana batter pouring from a bowl into a loaf tin lined with baking paperPour into the lined tin
  6. Line drawing of a hand pushing a thin skewer into the domed top of a baked loaf in its tinTest with a skewer

Why banana bread is a cake, not a bread

The “bread” in the name perhaps comes from the loaf tin it is baked in. There is no yeast and no kneading: the batter is sweetened with sugar and raised with baking soda, so it belongs with loaf cakes such as sand cake and marble cake. If you want a frosted version baked as a cake, try banana cake.

It is easy to put together, and although it needs an hour in the oven, that is fine: the hour fills the whole house with the smell of banana. I have made banana bread before, especially because the children love it. It is cheap to make, and you usually have most of what you need in the house already – including the most important ingredient of all, the bananas.

Use the ripest bananas you have

The riper the bananas, the better the banana bread. They can be overripe, with dark spots all over the peel, and several baking sites name very ripe bananas as the key to a sweet, moist loaf. So instead of throwing brown bananas in the bin, bake them. Two more ways to use them up: banana muffins and banana pancakes.

How to tell when banana bread is done

Banana bread is done when a skewer pushed into the middle comes out with no wet batter on it. In this recipe that takes about 60 minutes at 175 °C, and the loaf rises and domes in the tin. If wet batter clings to the skewer, bake it a little longer and test again.

The most common mistake: overmixing

Overmixing is the mistake baking sites name most often: beating the batter hard after the flour goes in can make banana bread tough or rubbery, according to Tasting Table and Chowhound. When the method says stir well, stir until no dry flour is left, then stop.

How to serve banana bread

Serve it as it is, make an icing for it, add chocolate, or slice it and spread it with honey.

How to store and freeze banana bread

Let the loaf cool, then wrap it in plastic film or put it in a plastic bag and keep it at room temperature. How long it lasts depends on your kitchen, and recipe sites give anything from one to four days. To keep it longer, freeze it in slices with baking paper between them, as Arla suggests, and take out one slice at a time.

Where banana bread comes from

Banana bread recipes started appearing in American cookbooks in the 1930s, when baking soda and baking powder were widely sold and the Depression made people reluctant to waste overripe fruit, according to King Arthur Baking and Wikipedia. It has stayed popular since, especially in the US, where 23 February is marked as National Banana Bread Day – an unofficial food day, not a government holiday.

Bananas, briefly

We do not think much about it when we put a few bananas in the shopping basket, but botanically a banana is a berry. There are many varieties besides the yellow one we know best, including green cooking bananas such as East African matoke, small, sweet Lady Finger bananas, and red bananas.

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