THE Banana Bread Recipe

August 01, 2020




Let me start off by saying that I've baked over 50+ loaves of banana bread in the last year alone(ya, thanks a lot Ms. Rona). But it all started with Bon Appetit's Banana Bread Recipe. I really liked the fact that you have to beat the room temp butter with mascarpone or yogurt which makes the loaf sooo fluffy. What I didn't like about their recipe was that you needed 200 grams of brown sugar, which in my opinion, is too damn sweet. So in this recipe, we'll cut that in half so I can make it past 50. The other reason why I love this recipe so much is the last step, sprinkling on some walnuts on TOP, not just inside the loaf, it gives it a really nice cronch, not a typo.


Ok, so I'm gonna start rambling about baking and food science now, you can scroll down the the ingredients and steps if you don't wanna hear it, but I promise it's really interesting 🥺


Measuring Flour 🍞 A majority of the times where you've messed up a baking recipe is when flour is incorrectly measured. When you scoop flour with a measuring cup, it's likely that you're over or under 20%. When flour sits, it becomes super dense, so instead of putting in one cup, you might've done 1.2 cup. The best thing to do here is to use a scale. But not everyone has one, so just fluff up the flour before scooping it, and then scrape off the top.

Read more about how to properly measure flour here


Brown Sugar 👨‍🍳 It's really just sugar with molasses. Lightbrown has less molasses than dark. In this recipe, dark brown sugar will make the loaf a lot more tender, but light brown should work.


Mascarpone? Yogurt? Sour Cream? Cottage Cheese? 🧀 Okay, I’ve tried all of these, each more than once. The difference is subtle, but mascarpone gives you the most tender texture, but it can be a little pricy.


Butter 🧈 It has to be room temp. Creaming butter and sugar gives the loaf good structure. When beating butter and sugar together, we're beating air into the butter which allows the sugar to hold the air. If you forgot to warm your butter, the best and quickest way is to heat up a glass container with super hot water then place it over the butter for a few minutes. Do not microwave it, I will cry if you do this, you'll literally end up with a jello loaf.



Ingredients

  • 1 ½ Cup all-purpose flour (180g)
  • 1 ¼ TEAspoon baking soda
  • ¾ TEAspoon kosher salt
  • ½ Cup DARK brown sugar (100g)
  • ⅓ Cup Mascarpone, plain greek yogurt, sour cream, or cottage cheese(70-90g)
  • ¼ Cup(half a stick) butter, room temp4
  • 2 Eggs
  • 4 Ripe bananas
  • ½ Cup chopped walnuts
  • ¼ Cup Unsweetened Coconut Flakes


Instructions

  • Pre-heat oven, 350degrees.
  • Spray loaf pan with nonstick spray then line with parchment paper
  • Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl
  • Beat brown sugar, mascarpone, and butter in a separate bowl until it’s light and fluffy. Highly recommend using an electric/stand mixer
  • Add Eggs one at a time and keep beating
  • Mixer on low, then incorporate flour mixture. DO NOT over beat this. The more you beat flour with a wet ingredient, the more gluten it produces, which leads to a tougher loaf of bread. You can even just fold in the flour mixture with a rubber spatula.
  • Peel and mush the banana in a bowl, then add it to your batter.
  • Mix in walnuts and coconuts. You can even do chocolate bits, but I’m not a big fan.
  • Pour it into your pan, then finish off with walnut bits on top for a crispy top. You can also use more coarse sugar like turbinado, but i’m not a fan because it’s too sweet.
  • Bake for 55minutes to an hour at 350 degrees.