How to Make Banana Bread

Banana bread falls into the category of quick breads. Quick breads include loaves, muffins, scones and biscuits. Because they’re leavened with baking powder or baking soda, instead of yeast, the preparation time is shorter. So novice and accomplished bakers alike can offer fresh-from-the-oven goodies in no time.

Tips for Perfect Quick Breads

• Overmixing makes quick breads tough. Mix batter for loaves and muffins with a spoon, not an electric mixer, just until dry ingredients are moistened.
• To prevent gummy, soggy or heavy loaves, don’t increase the amount of fruit or vegetables called for in recipe.
• Grease only the bottom of loaf or muffins pans, unless otherwise specified. This prevents a lip – hard, dry edge – from forming.
• Allow at least 2 inches of space around pans in the oven for heat circulation.
• Cracks will form on top of quick breads. This is caused by leavening action during baking and is normal.
• Cool loaves completely for 2 hours to prevent crumbling when slicing. For easy slicing and better flavor, store loaves tightly covered for 24 hours.
• Cut loaves with a serrated knife, using a light sawing motion.

When making banana bread you want to use very ripe bananas. If you have bananas that are brown — perfect! — but ripe bananas speckled with brown spots will also work well. The riper the fruit, the sweeter the bread. No ripe bananas to be found? If you’re planning to make banana bread in a few days, you can do a couple things to make sure they’re ripe in time. First, pull apart any bananas that share a stem. Second, put the bananas in a brown paper bag and fold it closed. Both these tricks help speed up the ripening process.

This is our most popular classic banana bread recipe that has appeared in every edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. This heritage recipe does the trick every time we’ve got a banana bread craving!

What You’ll Need:

• Ingredients for Banana Bread
• 2 loaf pans, 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches, or 1 loaf pan, 9 x 5 x 3 inches.
• Large bowl
• Spatula
• Toothpicks for testing doneness
• Wire rack for cooling

Steps:

1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease bottom of loaf pan(s). Note that the sides of the pan are not greased, so the batter can rise properly.

2. Mix sugar and butter in large bowl. Stir in eggs until well blended. Add bananas, buttermilk and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt just until moistened — there will be some lumps. Gently fold in nuts. Pour into pan(s).

3. Bake 8-inch loaves about 1 hour, 9-inch loaf about 1 1/4 hours, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Carefully loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans and place top side up on wire rack.

4. Cool completely, about 2 hours, before slicing. Wrap tightly and store at room temperature up to 4 days or refrigerate up to 10 days.

Expert Tip: No buttermilk on hand? In an emergency, you can mix 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar and enough milk to make 1/2 cup. Or substitute 1/2 cup plain yogurt.

To make this into Blueberry-Banana Bread: Omit nuts. Stir 1 cup fresh or frozen (thawed) and drained blueberries into batter. Fold blueberries in gently to prevent them from releasing juice into the batter and turning the batter gray.

Making Mini Banana Bread Loaves

Bake quick bread batters in miniature loaf pans, muffin pans or small cake molds in special shapes. To determine how much batter to use for a pan, fill with water, then pour the water into a measuring cup. See below for how much batter to use for your pan size.

Banana muffins are a tasty variation on banana bread and quite easy to make. They’re a perfect option when you need a portable breakfast, or to slip in a lunchbox for a mid-morning or afternoon snack.

We firmly believe everyone should be able to enjoy banana bread, so we’ve got recipes for gluten-free banana bread and vegan banana bread. And for those watching fat and calories, we’ve got a skinny version, too!

There are countless types of banana bread, from blueberry-banana to banana-chocolate chip and everything you can think of in between. Recipes vary, but there’s surely a banana bread recipe for everyone’s tastes. Here are just a few of our favorite flavor variations.

Completely cooled loaves of banana bread should be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap or foil and will last in the refrigerator up to 1 week. Tightly wrapped loaves placed in freezer plastic bags can be frozen for 3 months.

If you have very ripe bananas but you’re not ready to make banana bread, peel and mash the bananas and freeze in 1-cup portions to be added to recipes later on. Simply thaw before adding to your recipe. One cup of mashed banana is equal to about two medium bananas.