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Banana bread is a quick, sweet bread made with ripe bananas. The best bananas for banana bread are very ripe, and recipes usually include flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, butter, eggs, and optional inclusions like nuts or chocolate chips. The batter is baked in a skillet for about 50 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and should be taken out when the center still looks slightly raw.
Banana bread is a type of quick bread, meaning that although it’s treated like a loaf, it takes much less time to prepare and cook, and doesn’t involve yeast. It’s also a sweet bread, as it’s made with extra fruit and sugar. Many people enjoy plain banana bread and it’s also great with butter or jam after a light toast. Some people eat banana bread more like dessert than bread, since it’s so sweet and flavorful.
There are numerous recipes for banana bread, but all of them are based on the star ingredient of extremely ripe bananas. Ideally, bananas shouldn’t be refrigerated or frozen, as the cold temperature can disrupt the cell structure of the bananas. In the opinion of this wise GEEK writer, the best banana bread comes from bananas that have gone completely black and soft, walking a fine line between safe to eat and questionable. Other cooks prefer to use bananas with an abundance of brown spots, as they are less sweet.
To make the banana bread, begin by sifting together 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon baking powder. For a nuttier flavor, replace some of the all-purpose flour with whole-wheat flour, but don’t replace all of the flour, as this will make the banana bread gritty and heavy. Set the sifted dry ingredients aside and beat five and 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter until creamy before adding two ripe bananas and mashing the mixture together. Take the time to mix the butter and bananas well before mixing in 2/3 of the sugar and adding two large eggs.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Small lumps are perfectly acceptable and nothing to worry about. Purists can skip to the next paragraph, but people who want to add inclusions may want to consider nuts, other fruit, or chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are an excellent addition to banana bread, especially if you like the sweeter side. Add no more than 1/2 cup of these inclusions.
Pour the banana bread batter into a well-oiled six-cup skillet and slide it into a preheated 350-degree Fahrenheit (177-degree Celsius) oven. Bake for about 50 minutes, pulling out when the center still looks slightly raw and incomplete. Remember that banana bread will continue to bake as it cools, so pulling it out from underneath ensures the bread stays moist, rather than becoming dry and crumbly. After chilling about 10 minutes in the pan, turn the banana bread onto a wire rack to cool.
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