Banana Bread

1

April 11, 2013 by epaduani

Apparently I am on a fruit bread baking kick, this being the second fruit bread I’ve made in as many days.  Considering that I am a little bit off pace in regards to completing all 100 recipes in Beard on Bread before the end of the year, baking two days in a row isn’t a bad thing.  Jim includes two recipes for banana bread in the book, one a plain “Banana Bread” and the other a “Banana Nut Bread”.  I decided that I would  make the regular “Banana Bread”, mostly because I didn’t want to have to include nuts in the bread I made today.  This bread, which Jim finds “lighter and perhaps more flavorful than the previous one (the Banana Nut Bread),” is just as easy to make as the other baking powder breads.  It’s a good day when the most difficult step of a recipe is mashing bananas.  I just wish I didn’t have to sing the chorus of that song by Gwen Stefani every time I need to spell bananas…

Banana Bread                                                                    [1 loaf]

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter (1 stick) or other shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 cup mashed, very ripe bananas (about 2 bananas)

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar

1/2 cup chopped nuts (Optional – Feel free to include if you wish, but I am not)

As this bread requires only a short amount of time to prepare, the first thing that I did was preheat my oven to 350°.  Once I had done that, I sifted the flour with the baking soda and salt into a medium sized mixing bowl.  Though the recipe called for “sifted all-purpose flour”, I did not sift it first before sifting it again with the baking soda and salt.  One sifting would have to do.

In a separate, larger mixing bowl I creamed the butter, which I had softened in the microwave for about 20 seconds, and then gradually added the sugar.  Once that was mixed well, I added the eggs and mashed bananas and blended it all thoroughly.

After combining the milk and lemon juice, which Jim pointed out “will curdle a bit,” I slowly and alternately folded in the flour mixture and milk mixture, “beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.”  After each addition of either the flour or milk mixture I blended it all really well as I didn’t want any flour lumps in the bread when it was done.  Plus, Jim added a note in this section of the cookbook saying that if you “find doughy or hard lumps in the slice it is certain that you did not mix the original dough well.”  Well, I was not about to be guilty of that so I made sure that I blended it damn near fantastic.  (If you wish to add nuts in your bread, you should add them now…and stir then in well.)  At this point my dough/batter was complete and I poured it into a “lavishly buttered”  9 x 5 x 3-inch bread pan.  I put the pan in the oven and set the timer for 1 hour.  It would be ready when the “bread springs back when lightly touched in the center.”  

After 1 hour I checked the bread and found that it did spring back when I touched it in the center.  Considering that the image I had in my head was that of the Pillsbury Dough Boy being poked in the belly with a finger, I was going to have to assume that the “springing back” was sufficient.  I took the bread pan from the oven, removed the loaf from it and set the loaf on a wire rack to cool.

The bread smelled great and had a beautiful golden color to it.  The top had split a little bit, but Jim had warned of that.  In the cookbook he advised that baking powder or soda breads “are wont to break during the baking period because they are usually somewhat heavier.”  He also added, in a separate recipe, that this crack “is of no great consequence.”  When I sliced it the first thing I noticed was that the inside had a bunch of black specks in it.  Not knowing what this was, I used Google and learned that when baked the seeds in a banana turn black.  That was good to know…and quite a relief.  The inside had a nicely textured crumb, with small bits of bananas here and there throughout the loaf.  I took a bite and it was great.  It didn’t taste like many of the other banana breads I have had over the years (which is not many, admittedly, as I had never been a huge fan of banana bread).  It was just crusty enough to hold the slice together and to give the slightest bit of crunch when I bit through the bottom of the slice.  I sliced another piece and put some butter on it and, as expected, that only added to the enjoyment.  I may not become the banana bread man, but I will certainly make this again.  Now all I need to do is get Gwen Stefani singing “This bread is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s” out of my head.

Happy Baking!