Great Grandma's Banana Bread

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CatCrap
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Great Grandma's Banana Bread

Post by CatCrap »

Listen guys.. i'm sharing this with you cuz i like you. I don't believe in holding out on a recipe too. I'm a chef, so i teach people to cook on a daily basis. I've worked in some very competitive kitchens and i know there are many folk out there who believe in NOT sharing recipes or techiniques. I'm not one of them. Besides, a recipe is just a recipe, it's the person making it which will make the difference. I did consider taking this Bread public, trying to sell it somehow, maybe at farmer's markets or something. But i kind of abandoned that idea. At least i'll get to share it with some more people here.

Banana Bread Recipe

Set your oven to 350. If it is a convection oven, no fan, or low fan. You'll need a Loaf pan, but i've actually baked this in other pans and it came out fine. A 2" half hotel pan works pretty well.

Ingredients:
2-3 Ripe Bananas - When i say ripe, i mean way over ripe. I mean totally brown, soft, mushy inside. That's the best type of banana for this, and it also uses up those bananas that have gone too far. You can save up bananas by putting them in the freezer, in their skins.
1.25 C Sugar, Granulated
1/2 C Butter (a pound of butter is 2C, so a quarter pound, or a stick)(original recipe called for lard, i use butter as i don't have lard.)
2 eggs
1/4 C Buttermilk (original recipe called for "sour milk" i never have sour milk, so buttermilk works great)
1.5 C Flour, AP
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp GOOD/Real vanilla extract

The recipe can easily be doubled
Let your butter soften up to room temp. You can flash it in the Microwave for quick bursts, but don't let it melt at all. This is necessary for the next step, creaming, to work properly. You could do this by hand, but it's way better in a Stand Mixer (like a kitchen aid mixer.) Useing the Paddle attachement, start mixing the butter and sugar together. Let it work for about 5-8 minutes, it will look creamy, and the sugar should have somewhat dissolved, and not be gritty or grainy. With the mixer running on low, drop in each egg, one at a time, letting it get fully incorporated. Then add the buttermilk and vanilla. At this point, i'll pull it out of the mixer into a large bowl. In another large bowl, sift together the Flour, BP,BS, and Salt. (you don't HAVE to sift it, but it's good practice) Mix the dry with the wet, with a whisk, until it's come together but no longer. You don't need to keep mixing, it will come out tough. Next, if you like, add any extras. I almost always add some semi-sweet chocolate chips, but nuts are also good. Pecans or walnuts, chopped. Fold these in. Last, take you bananas in a bowl and mash them up really well, either by hand or with a masher. Fold this into you mix last. Then oil/spray your pan and pour the mix in.

Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes. It should be springy, not jiggly when you shake the pan gently.

Let cool on a wire rack for 30 min, then carefully invert the pan and remove it. Let cool, and eat!

Enjoy!
Last edited by CatCrap on Tue May 15, 2018 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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distiller_dresden
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Re: Great Grandma's Banana Bread

Post by distiller_dresden »

Can't wait to try this!

Here's my banana bread recipe-

1.25c flour
1tsp baking soda
.5tsp salt
2 large eggs
.5tsp vanilla extr
.5c butter
.75c dark brown sugar
.25c sugar
3 overripe bananas (enough to make 1.25c liquid mashed up nana)
.5c walnuts (toast in oven at 350F 10min on cookie sheet first and let cool)
.5c pecans (toast in oven with walnuts)

Preheat oven to 350F, and place parchment paper into a standard loaf pan.

Butter should be room temp; if not soft enough, cut into slices and microwave 10 sec bursts until soft enough to cream with sugar and vanilla. Set aside.

Mix eggs until beaten. Add bananas. When well-mixed, add creamed sugar and butter mixture.

Mix flour, salt, baking soda together. Fold in 1/3 of flour into wet mixture with spatula.

Fold in second 1/3 of flour mix into wet mixture, also adding nuts at this point making sure they are well mixed.

Gently fold in last 1/3 of the flour mix into the batter, stopping when some white/flour is still visible.

Check your parchment paper to make sure it is set/secure in the loaf pan and use spatula to empty batter into pan.

Place pan into preheated 350F oven for 45 minutes; check at this time with a WOODEN toothpick. If it doesn't come out perfectly clean, let the bread cook 5 more minutes.
Continue to check the bread, using a fresh toothpick each time, until the bread is done. Remove immediately and place on a cooling rack. After 20 minutes carefully
remove the loaf from the pan and gently place it back on the rack to cool outside of the pan until room temperature, should take a few hours. Once done, you can wrap
loaf/loaves (recipe can be scaled up by simply multiplying x2, x3, etc.) in parchment, then placing each into a freezer ziploc bag, try to get all the air out, and place into
the freezer.

I like to make quadruple batches of this at once. I buy 2 large bunches of bananas, say 7-8 banana bunches, and leave these 2 bunches in a plastic grocery bag, tied loosely.
They will be BROWN ripe within 7-10 days and may develop a little white mold, but this is fine. When you pick the bunch up the bananas may even fall off. When you open
them they are PERFECT and super soft and almost converted to banana sugar, they mash up very nicely and make wonderful banana bread.

You can also make the bread without nuts, it doesn't change cooking time at all. Make sure to use wood toothpicks, though; something about the wood grain is just perfect
for checking if the bread is done.

HINT - this process of banana ripening is also how I prepared and mashed up bananas for my rum wash which ultimately yielded a rum that after aging on wood got me banana
notes in the finished rum...
I read, I write, I still.
The must interstitial man no Earth.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
CatCrap
Swill Maker
Posts: 189
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:56 pm

Re: Great Grandma's Banana Bread

Post by CatCrap »

Nice! I'll give this a go also. Our recipes don't seem to far off. That's pastry for ya.. there's usually just a right way to do things. Many simple rules to follow to get a good result.
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distiller_dresden
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Location: Northeastern Indiana

Re: Great Grandma's Banana Bread

Post by distiller_dresden »

Yeah, baking is much more science than what we do. What happens in the oven is very much hard chemistry; start fooling with it with no clue what you're doing and you will feck the dog very quickly and pull out a steaming blob or black burnt mess tout suite. I love baking for that very reason; hard science is my mental Viagra.

You can try using all dark brown sugar in mine, or just all light brown; I used to use all dark brown but the caramelization on the outside/crust was so severe, while I enjoyed it, others trying it would sometimes comment they thought my bread was burnt. I found the .75/.25 dark brown/white sugar is the perfect balance and makes it really molasses/buttery and rich.

But subbing out the sugar for equal amounts of any other sugar is something that you can do no problem to your tastes; it might be REALLY interesting if you made it with panella or another barely processed sugar like that.
I read, I write, I still.
The must interstitial man no Earth.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
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