Banana Bread Part Deux
Last night I made banana bread again. This time I used frozen bananas that had been thawing in the frig for 2 days. I used my silicon baking pan again for the task and, as promised, I touched the pan after I’d taken it out of the oven.
Yep, its hot to the touch. Not like metal or glass because it didn’t burn on contact, but it was still pretty darn hot.
I guess the moral of that story is, if you really had to take one out of the oven because evil baking gnomes had taken all your oven mitts, you could do it and not have blistered fingers if you were really quick.
Also, as an interesting visual — if you take lovely blackened thawed bananas, cut the top off, turn it upside down and squeeze on the un-cut end your banana will slide right out into your bowl and make a wet plopping noise when it hits bottom.
That is all.
Do you have a good recipe for banana bread? I think I tried something like “brown sugar banana bread” off allrecipes.com and it turned out really dense… like a brick. You could do some serious damage if you threw it at someone’s head.
I have the banana bread recipe I use from my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. That one always seems to turn out well for me. Last night’s wasn’t the best, but I think the bananas were a bit damaged from their trip through the freezer.
RyanK has a good recipe, but the bread probably has a million calories.
The one in How to Cook Everything by Marc Bittman is a really good one.
It is as follows:
1 stick butter
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas, mashed until smooth
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup grated dried coconut (he says unsweetened, but yuck!)
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan. Mix together dry ingredients. Cream the butter, then beat in the eggs and the bananas. Stir this into the dry ingredients, but only until combined; do not overmix. Add in vanilla, nuts and coconut.
Pour into loaf pan, bake for 45-60 minutes or until nicely browned and a toothpick can be inserted into the center of the bread, and come out mostly clean. Cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing the pan. To store, wrap in waxed paper.
I have the Bittman and two different copies of BHG. I generally find the Bittman recipes are bland and tasteless, but the general instructions are very good, like how to make ravioli. I saw he has some sort of world recipes cookbook out now, so maybe that one would be more flavorful. It was on a big stand in B&N, so I flipped through it, and most things I found looked a little too ambitious for me – but I’ll have to look at it again sometime.
Thanks for the recommendations. I’ll have to get some more bananas. Coconut sounds good.
OK….
This is my Great-Grandmother’s recipe (Seriously)… passed down to my Grandmother and then my Mother… then to Ryan D. (Not me. I don’t bake.)
There are three very important bits of this recipe that make all of the difference to the final product:
1. Find the cheapest, oiliest margarine you can get. She uses sticks, but if you can take an equal measurement from a tub, that’s fine too.
2. After you’ve mixed and poured the batter into the loaf pan, let it sit for a minute, then drop the pan on the counter repeatedly to get air bubbles out of the batter. This is important because it makes the batter dense and the density keeps the bread moist.
3. The bananas my mom uses usually come out of the freezer. She bought hands of bananas all the time, but we didn’t always eat them before they’d turn brown and mushy. Put your bananas in the freezer after they become a bit mushy and brown, let them freeze solid and then thaw completely before making the batter. This is important because it also effects texture and density of the bread.
So here goes…
1 1/4 C All-Purpose Flour
1 C Granulated Sugar
1/2 Cup oily margarine (remember cheap and oily, like guys from New Jersey)
1/2 tsp. Table Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
2 Eggs
3 Thawed Bananas (Mashed)
Combine dry ingredients in a bowl
Beat eggs and then fold into dry mix
Add softened margarine to mix
Add bananas and mix lightly to remove lumps (a few small lumps are ok)
Add to a buttered, lightly floured baking pan
Drop pan on counter a few times to remove air bubbles
Bake @ 350 for 45 – 60 minutes. It’s not done until it’s done… so check with a toothpick. After you make the bread a few times, you’ll be able to recognize the perfect time to remove it from the oven.
This bread is best when slightly undercooked in the center.
YUM.