Our Family Banana Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why use mushy bananas for banana bread? ›

Ripe bananas are not only softer and easier to mash and blend into a batter, but they are also sweeter, which is why baking recipes specifically call for ripe bananas in ingredient lists. As the bananas ripen, the fruit converts starches to sugars, making them sweeter and more flavorful.

You Over-Mix the Batter

For soft and tender banana bread, gently stir the wet ingredients into the dry — don't overmix! The more you stir, the more gluten will develop. The result will be a tough, rubbery banana bread. Simply stir until moist, and then do no more.

Banana bread recipes typically ask you to use overripe bananas so that they're easier to mush. This means it's tempting to toss all your bananas into the mix when you're ready to bake, to avoid food waste. But if you add too much of the fruit into your batter, your bread could turn out mushy, heavy, and wet.

If you are using regular milk, you would normally use baking powder. Banana bread normally calls for sour milk, sour cream or buttermilk; all of these are acidic, so in this case what you need is baking soda.

You can take advantage of ethylene's ripening properties at home by putting your banana into a closed paper bag; the paper will trap ethylene while letting in enough oxygen to help move the process along. For even faster ripening, add an apple, pear, apricot, or avocado — they also release ethylene.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

It can take 15 minutes to properly preheat some ovens. If your oven has not reached the correct baking temperature before the banana bread is placed in the oven, the banana bread will be undercooked and more likely to sink.

2 bananas: 1-1/3 cups chopped | 1 cup mashed. 3 bananas: 2 cups chopped | 1-1/2 cups mashed. 4 bananas: 2-2/3 cups chopped | 2 cups mashed.

Brown, overripe bananas are sweeter because in the ripening process the starches in the banana are converted to sugar. You can even use super-soft, black bananas that have a really strong smell and are oozy inside. As long as they're not moldy, there's no such thing as too-ripe bananas for banana bread.

Adding more eggs makes for a spongy, less flavorful banana bread. Doubling the number of eggs I was using resulted in a spongy cake with a moist texture.

Why did my banana bread turn green? ›

In much smaller quantities, the baking soda still has a chemical reaction with acid. Low and behold the acidic component is in bananas, so any excess baking soda that doesn't help the banana bread rise will react, hence green or blue banana bread slices the next day.

Baking soda works best in conjunction with an acidic ingredient. In the case of banana bread, this may be buttermilk, brown sugar, molasses or the bananas themselves. Recipes generally include just enough baking soda to balance the acidity in the batter.

Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is the raising agent and this can sometimes taste bitter or soapy if the wrong quantity is used. Make sure that you measure the bicarbonate of soda with a proper 1 teaspoon/5ml measuring spoon and the spoon measurement should be level.

A banana that's way too squishy and soft for your cereal is just perfect for banana bread: the blacker the banana, the sweeter and more assertive its flavor. If you can't find overripe bananas, you'll need to create your own.

One thing you can do if your bananas aren't quite ripe is to roast them in the oven. Just leave them in their skins, put them in the oven at 400 until they are nicely browned and squeeze them out of their skins like toothpaste. It gives a richer, deeper banana flavor.

That said, Rogers states that if your bananas are jet black and mushy, your safest bet is to cook with them rather than eating them out of hand or using them raw in things like smoothies or nice cream. "The riper the bananas get, the more levels of bacteria could be on them," he says.