Banana Bread

What to expect

Taste

Sweet, but the sweetness is fruit sweetness rather than sugar sweetness — rounder, slightly floral, with a faint tang behind it from the soured cream and the bananas' own acidity. The brown sugar contributes a low caramel and molasses note that sits underneath rather than on top. Cinnamon is present as warmth rather than as a flavour you could name if you were not told, and the salt is high enough to be noticed as definition rather than as saltiness. The crust is a different thing from the crumb: caramelised, faintly bitter at the very edge, and much sweeter.

Aroma

The strongest thing about it, and it fills a house. Warm banana first, which is unmistakable and slightly fermented at the edges, then butter, then cinnamon and browned sugar. It smells most strongly about fifteen minutes before it is ready, which is a genuine hazard.

Texture

Dense and damp without being heavy or wet — the crumb should compress slightly under a thumb and spring back. There is no crumbliness to it; a slice holds together in the hand. The crust on top is thin, slightly chewy and noticeably different from the inside, and the lumps of unmashed banana show up as softer, wetter pockets.

Sound

Almost nothing, which is normal for a cake. The one sound worth having is the serrated knife going through the crust, which crackles slightly before it reaches the soft crumb.

How the flavour moves

The crust registers first and it is the sweetest, most caramelised part. Banana comes in through the middle of the mouthful, warm and full. Cinnamon and the faint sour-cream tang arrive together at the back, and the salt closes it off and stops the sweetness lingering. A slice eaten with salted butter shifts the whole balance: the salt moves to the front and the banana reads as fruit rather than sugar.

Serve it

Best a little warm rather than hot, about 30 minutes after it comes out of the tin. Fridge-cold it is dense and tastes of much less; the banana aroma in particular is a warm-temperature phenomenon and disappears entirely when the loaf is cold.

Goes with

Tea, black coffee, salted butter. Cream cheese is a common American treatment and works. A slice with vanilla ice cream, warmed, is the dessert version.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy, and the only real skill in it is knowing when to stop folding.

Cost

Very low, and lower still if the bananas were on their way to the bin.

Equipment

A 900g/2lb loaf tin about 21 x 11cm, one large bowl, a fork and a spatula. No mixer needed and a mixer arguably makes it worse.

When to make it

Whenever the fruit bowl decides. It is a breakfast and a tea-time cake rather than a pudding.

Best season

None.

You know it is done when

The loaf splits along its length as it rises, and that split is where the skewer goes — it is the last part to set. The crack should look dry rather than glossy and wet. The loaf will also have shrunk very slightly away from the sides of the tin.

And it feels like

A skewer through the middle of the split comes out with damp crumbs clinging to it and no wet batter. Clean and dry means it has gone five minutes too far, and this is a loaf where five minutes shows.

Food safety

Nothing unusual. The eggs are fully cooked at the temperatures reached.

Where it goes wrong

• Using bananas that are merely ripe. Yellow is not enough; the skins need to be blotched black.
• Beating rather than folding once the flour is in, which develops gluten and gives a tight rubbery crumb with a long tunnel down the middle.
• Baking at 180C, at which the sugar-heavy crust burns before the centre sets.
• Cutting it warm, when the crumb is still setting and drags on the knife.
• Keeping it in the fridge, which stales it faster than a cupboard.

If it does go wrong

A tunnel or a long cavity through the middle means over-mixing after the flour went in. Sunken in the centre: underbaked, or the oven door was opened early. Dry: overbaked, or the bananas were not ripe enough to bring their own moisture. Gummy and heavy at the base: too much banana, or the mixture was not stirred enough before the flour went in and the fat separated. A pale, bland loaf almost always means yellow bananas.

Making it ahead

Better on the second day than the first, so making it a day ahead is a genuine improvement rather than a compromise.

Keeping it

Wrapped in foil or in a tin at room temperature for three days. Never in the fridge, which stales cake starch faster than a cupboard does.

Reheating

A slice toasted under a grill or in a dry pan, cut side down, is the best thing to do with day-three banana bread.

Freezing

Freezes very well, whole or in slices, wrapped tightly, for three months. Slices can be toasted from frozen.

Leftovers

Fried in butter and eaten with cream is a genuine dessert. Cubed and used as the base of a bread and butter pudding also works.

Scaling it

Doubles into two tins without change. Do not double into one large tin — the outside overbakes long before the centre sets.

Substitutions

Soured cream can be full-fat natural yoghurt, buttermilk or crème fraîche in the same weight; all three bring the acid the bicarbonate of soda needs. Light brown soft sugar can be dark for a heavier molasses note. A neutral oil can replace the melted butter at the same weight and gives a slightly damper loaf that keeps a day longer, at the cost of the butter flavour.

Dietary swaps

Contains cereals containing gluten, eggs and milk. Vegetarian as written. The dairy can go — oil for the butter, a plant yoghurt for the soured cream — and it still works, since neither is structural. The eggs are structural and cannot simply be dropped.

Shopping for it

Nothing needs sourcing. The bananas want time rather than quality.

Keeping the cost down

The recipe exists to use fruit that would otherwise be thrown away, which makes it one of the cheapest cakes there is. Black bananas can be frozen in their skins and thawed when there are enough of them.

Sustainability

It is a food-waste recipe by design, which is unusual for a cake and worth saying.

Nutrition

A sweet cake. The bananas contribute potassium and fibre and do not make it a health food.

Worth it?

The most forgiving cake in the collection and the one most often spoiled by a single avoidable habit, which is mixing it too much.

Where it comes from

Origin

The United States.

Also called

Banana bread.

What the name means

A quick bread, meaning a loaf raised chemically rather than with yeast and baked in a loaf tin. The name describes the shape and the method rather than making any claim about it being bread in the yeasted sense — it is, in every way that matters to a cook, a cake.

History

Two things had to happen before banana bread could exist. Bicarbonate of soda and baking powder had to be ordinary kitchen ingredients, which they were by the late nineteenth century, and bananas had to be cheap and abundant enough that a household would find itself with three going black, which happened in the United States in the early twentieth century as the fruit trade industrialised. Recipes duly appear in American cookery through the 1930s, notably in flour and raising-agent company booklets whose commercial interest in promoting the method is obvious. Pillsbury's Balanced Recipes of 1933 is among the earliest printings usually cited.

Why it matters

One of the most made home-baked items in the English-speaking world, and one of very few recipes whose defining ingredient is defined by being past its best. It is strongly associated with domestic thrift and with baking as a thing to do rather than a thing to plan.

When it is eaten

None. It is made when the bananas go black, which is its whole character.

The traditional way

The quick-bread or muffin method: wet ingredients combined separately, dry ingredients combined separately, the two folded together as briefly as possible.

How it changed

The original recipes are plainer and less sweet than most modern ones. The move towards melted butter or oil rather than creamed butter, and towards soured cream or yoghurt for moisture, is a later refinement and is what this version uses.

Regional variations

Walnuts and pecans are near-standard in American versions and much less common in British ones. Chocolate chips are a late addition. Caribbean and Latin American banana and plantain breads are related but separate traditions.

How this version differs

Soured cream and a lower oven temperature than most published recipes, both for the same reason: this loaf is aiming at damp rather than light, and 170C stops the fructose-heavy crust darkening before the middle sets.

Sources and credit

No individual author. The earliest widely circulated recipes are corporate booklet recipes.

Related recipes

Categories

Cuisines

American

Courses & dish types

BakingBreakfast

Diets

Vegetarian