The Best Banana Bread Ever

If you have an aversion to butter, you can stop reading now. If you like nice, rich banana bread, this recipe is the bomb.

Monday afternoon we returned home from our weekend away to a bowl of bananas past their prime. When faced with overripe bananas, I make banana bread.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with many recipes, but I have never really settled on one that I return to again and again. Last fall, I tinkered with a recipe from a Martha Stewart cookbook and hit the payload. It’s moist and light and bursting with banana flavor. My version substitutes plain yogurt for the sour cream and replaces half the white flour with whole wheat – a nod to health consciousness and a way to rationalize eating a slice for breakfast.

You can add walnuts or pecans, but this time I threw in about ¾ cup of chocolate chips. Either way, it’s delicious and makes a great addition to a brunch menu or a welcome offering in the staff lounge. Bon appetit!

Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips

1 stick of butter, softened
¾ c sugar
2 eggs
¾ c unbleached flour
¾ c whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
½ c plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup mashed ripe banana
¾ c semi-sweet chocolate chips or nuts

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and butter a standard loaf pan. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in eggs and beat until well combined. Sift together dry ingredients and then add to the wet ingredients, mixing to just combine. Add yogurt, vanilla and banana and stir well. Mix in chocolate chips or nuts.  Cook for 1 hour until browned and a tester comes out clean. Turn out onto a rack to cool.

Create Your Own Sunshine – Bake Bread!

A few months ago, I went through a bread-baking binge. It was my antidote to that gray cloud of uncertainty that seemed to hang over everything. Making my own bread gave me a certain sense of self-sufficiency – even if it was largely symbolic – and the process and end result gave my spirits a lift.  And if there is anything that smells more heavenly than baking bread, I’ve not encountered it.

This weekend, I heard another couple of loaves calling.

A winter afternoon with nothing pressing to do, is the perfect time to make bread. While the process takes several hours in total, the workload is light and leaves stretches of time for other activities. There is the initial mixing and kneading of the dough, followed by a lull during the first rising. Then there is shaping the loaves, followed by a second rise and baking. The pace is just right for puttering about the house, or a walk around the neighborhood. (In my case, cleaning the play room, moving the play kitchen out of the real kitchen, accompanying Milo and Jonathan on a walk to the park, and kicking a ball around.)

This basic wheat bread is great straight from the oven, dripping with some butter and honey, of course, but it also makes a fine sandwich bread. If you feel like it, you can add in some nuts (walnuts, pecans) or dried fruit such as raisins or chopped dates, after the first rise – just press them into the dough as best you can.

Basic Wheat Bread
makes 2 loaves

1 ½ cups warm water
2 pkgs. Active dry yeast
2 T sugar
4 cups whole wheat flour
1 ¾ to 2 cups white flour
2 tsp salt
¾ c low-fat milk
½ c honey
2 T melted butter

Place ½ cup of the warm water in a small bowl and sprinkle in yeast and sugar. Set aside until it is bubbly. In a large bowl, mix together wheat flour and 1 ½ cups of the white flour, and salt. Add the yeast mixture to this. In a small bowl, mix together milk, honey and melted butter. Make a well in the flour mixture and add the liquid ingredients. Mix and add in more white flour as needed to make a manageable dough. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm spot for 1 – ½ hours or until doubled. Punch down dough, turn out and divide into two equal pieces. Shape into loaves and place in oiled loaf pans, cover and rise again for 45 minutes.

Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes and then lower heat to 350 degrees and continue baking for 30 minutes or until the loaves sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.