As the colder months approach this year, people begin to tend toward warm, comfort foods. One of the best snacks, desserts, or even breakfasts to eat is a nice slice of banana bread. Banana bread is an easy and quick recipe, but there are three important factors to elevate any basic banana bread recipe.
Use Brown Butter
Butter is arguably the most delicious ingredient ever, with its rich flavor and its smooth texture. Butter makes every baked good, better and is essential for banana bread. Using browned butter creates a more complex and unique flavor. Browned butter occurs when you melt the butter so much that you begin to drive off all the water in the butter and it becomes clarified butter. Once you have a pure clarified butter, you continue to heat the butter until it creates brown specs at the edge of the pan. This browning that occurs is called the Maillard reaction, where the sugars in the butter brown to a certain temperature to create a toasty and more complex flavor. When browning butter, I recommend using a shallow, stainless steal saucepan because it will be easier to see the brown bits forming, making sure the butter does not burn.
Use Warm Spices
Warm spices are one of the most notable additions to holiday baking as small amounts of spice in a baked good can create notable and distinct flavors on one’s palate. Cinnamon is probably the most used spice in baked goods because of its tendency to be associated with sweetness. Although many other spices like allspice, cardamom, nutmeg, or clove create great subtle flavors to baked goods. I like adding both cinnamon and cardamom to my banana bread for a common flavor and a more floral, citrusy spice, but you can experiment with other flavors as well.
Don’t Overmix the Batter
Banana bread is classified as a “quick bread” where you add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. This creates a recipe that is easy to make and even easier to clean up, but you need to remember to not overmix the dough. The dry ingredients, mainly flour, include gluten which reacts quickly with water. The more you mix the batter, more gluten stands form in the dough as it encounters more water-based ingredients creating a tough, dense bread. I recommend using a glass bowl if to mix the dough so you can see the bottom of the bowl to determine if there are any remaining pockets of flour left in the batter, creating a tender, soft banana bread.
My Banana Bread Recipe
*Note: If you own an electronic scale, I recommend using it, as it results in more precise measurements
Ingredients:
1 stick of unsalted butter
213 grams of all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon of kosher salt
1 ¼ teaspoon of baking soda
½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon of ground cardamom
3 overripe bananas
175 grams or ¾ cup of sugar
50 grams or about ¼ cup of sour cream (room temperature)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 large eggs (room temperature)
Directions:
1) Set oven rack to middle position and preheat to 350 degrees. Butter a loaf pan and set aside.
2) Add butter to a small saucepan and set burner to medium low heat. Cook the butter until browned bits have formed; this will take close to 10 minutes. Once browned, pour butter into a small bowl and let slightly cool.
3) Whisk flour, salt, baking soda, and spices in a medium bowl, and set aside.
4) In a large, preferably glass bowl, mash the bananas with either a potato masher or a fork until evenly mashed. Then add sugar, sour cream, vanilla, eggs, and cooled butter and whisk until combined.
5) Add the dry mixture into the wet mixture and fold with a flexible spatula until just combined.
6) Add the batter into the buttered loaf pan, and bake for 60-70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the bread comes out clean.
7) Let the bread sit in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove from pan and let cool completely on a wired rack.
Whether you are baking for a special occasion or for a quick snack, banana bread always is a perfect option. Never forget to enjoy a great slice with either cream cheese or salted butter!
