Best Banana Bread | Swanky Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to moist bread? ›

For example, fats like butter or oil can help keep moisture in, while sugars will help to caramelize on the outside and create a golden crust. These ingredients can also play an essential role in keeping your bread moist when added in smaller quantities.

Ripe bananas are not only softer and easier to mash and blend into a batter, but they are also sweeter, which is why baking recipes specifically call for ripe bananas in ingredient lists. As the bananas ripen, the fruit converts starches to sugars, making them sweeter and more flavorful.

You Over-Mix the Batter

For soft and tender banana bread, gently stir the wet ingredients into the dry — don't overmix! The more you stir, the more gluten will develop. The result will be a tough, rubbery banana bread. Simply stir until moist, and then do no more.

If you use too much flour, you'll end up with really dry banana bread, and If you don't use enough flour, your banana bread will be way too wet. The secret lies in how you measure the flour. The scoop out of the bag method could be packing way too much flour.

There's something magical about the bread you get at your local bakeries - they're always sooo soft and fluffy. Many of these breads, especially packaged ones, are made with a ton of chemical additives such as calcium propionate, amylase, and chlorine dioxide which help keep them soft, light, and fluffy for days.

When you add milk to your dough, the lactose (milk sugar) will add a subtle sweetness to your bread, and the milk proteins will increase its nutritional value. Better still, the milk fats help retain carbon monoxide gases during baking, so your loaf comes out softer.

If black bananas are spotted with mold, then it's time to step away! You absolutely should not use them for banana bread or consume them at all.

Banana bread recipes typically ask you to use overripe bananas so that they're easier to mush. This means it's tempting to toss all your bananas into the mix when you're ready to bake, to avoid food waste. But if you add too much of the fruit into your batter, your bread could turn out mushy, heavy, and wet.

The best bananas for banana bread aren't yellow; they're black. Or they're at least streaked with black/brown, with just the barest hint of green at the stem. And again, the darker the better: there's no such thing as a too-ripe banana when you're making banana bread.

It can take 15 minutes to properly preheat some ovens. If your oven has not reached the correct baking temperature before the banana bread is placed in the oven, the banana bread will be undercooked and more likely to sink.

Is it better to use bread flour or all purpose flour for banana bread? ›

Though it is called banana bread,it is not actually a bread . It is more of a cakey loaf made by the addition of soda bi carbonate as a leavening agent. The is no requirement of developing gluten in these kind of loaves and so even all purpose flour with a low content of gluten is good enough.

Adding more eggs makes for a spongy, less flavorful banana bread. Doubling the number of eggs I was using resulted in a spongy cake with a moist texture.

If you are using regular milk, you would normally use baking powder. Banana bread normally calls for sour milk, sour cream or buttermilk; all of these are acidic, so in this case what you need is baking soda.

Brush or spritz water all over the bread. Use more if the loaf is very dry and/or has a thick crust. Use less if the loaf has a thin crust or just needs a little pick-me-up. I've actually run the crust of a stale loaf directly under the faucet for a brief second without the bread getting soggy.

A simple and cost-effective method of applying moisture to both the dough and the oven is to use a small handheld water sprayer, available from most supermarkets or online.