Best Banana Bread Recipe Ever - Frog Prince Paperie (2024)

FAQs

Why use mushy bananas for banana bread? ›

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.

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.

Bananas can go from yellow with brown spots to totally black and still be okay to eat and use for baking. In fact, black bananas are some of the best for making banana bread because they have developed more sugar as they sit around and therefore taste sweeter. They may also be moister, which is perfect for baked goods.

You can take advantage of ethylene's ripening properties at home by putting your banana into a closed paper bag; the paper will trap ethylene while letting in enough oxygen to help move the process along. For even faster ripening, add an apple, pear, apricot, or avocado — they also release ethylene.

Mold on bananas is fuzzy white, gray, or greenish—it looks a lot like mold on bread. If a banana smells rotten or fermented or is leaking fluid, it's time to say goodbye. If the fruit inside, not just the peel, is black, that's a sign that your banana is too far gone to safely eat.

Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or a digital thermometer inserted into the center reads 200-205°F, about 55 to 65 minutes. Cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 15 minutes before removing the loaf from the pan to finish cooling completely.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Over mixing the batter

The reason is as you mix, the gluten begins to develop, and when too much development happens, you can end up with a dense, chewy loaf rather than the soft and delicious banana bread you were hoping for.

1-1/2 bananas: 1 cup chopped | 3/4 cup mashed. 2 bananas: 1-1/3 cups chopped | 1 cup mashed. 3 bananas: 2 cups chopped | 1-1/2 cups mashed. 4 bananas: 2-2/3 cups chopped | 2 cups mashed.

What happens if you put too many eggs in banana bread? ›

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.

Brown, overripe bananas are sweeter because in the ripening process the starches in the banana are converted to sugar. You can even use super-soft, black bananas that have a really strong smell and are oozy inside. As long as they're not moldy, there's no such thing as too-ripe bananas for banana bread.

Yes, dogs can eat bananas. In moderation, bananas are a great low-calorie treat for dogs. They're high in potassium, vitamins, biotin, fiber, and copper. They are low in cholesterol and sodium, but because of their high sugar content, bananas should be given as a treat, not part of your dog's main diet.

While browned bananas are great for baking, there comes a point when they're past their prime. With mold and decay, it's best to throw them away for safety reasons. If you see fruit flies, it's time to throw the bananas away!

A banana that's way too squishy and soft for your cereal is just perfect for banana bread: the blacker the banana, the sweeter and more assertive its flavor. If you can't find overripe bananas, you'll need to create your own.

One thing you can do if your bananas aren't quite ripe is to roast them in the oven. Just leave them in their skins, put them in the oven at 400 until they are nicely browned and squeeze them out of their skins like toothpaste. It gives a richer, deeper banana flavor.

That said, Rogers states that if your bananas are jet black and mushy, your safest bet is to cook with them rather than eating them out of hand or using them raw in things like smoothies or nice cream. "The riper the bananas get, the more levels of bacteria could be on them," he says.