Banana Bread Baking Success

The Man loves a good slice of banana bread. The Man also buys a lot of bananas and invariably there are one or two that get too brown before they get eaten. We finally got smart about peeling them and throwing them in a bag in the freezer. So now we always have a pretty good stash of very ripe bananas to use to make banana bread.

The Man likes his banana bread with banana flavored frosting which I find somewhat reprehensible, lol. But I oblige any time we can keep banana flavoring in the house. Banana flavoring grosses me out because it's artificial and it's just gross. Ha. It can be a little hard to find....darn - not darn. I don't frost the loaf, I just make a little container and he can frost by the slice.

So I thought I would share our Go To recipe for Flour's Famous Banana Bread. Since it's not a recipe I created I don't want to reprint it here but I'm linking you above to the original post on the Food Network website. As you can see when you go over to the recipe it had a good strong 5-star rating from a few hundred people. I definitely give it a thumbs up.

Here are a few of things that I think have helped me make this our favorite recipe.

1) Per the recipe, cutting parchment paper to line the bottom of the bread pan is a life changer. It makes it so easy to get out of the pan. This is a very moist loaf so getting it out of the pan without it coming apart is a challenge without the parchment paper. Once I let it cool for a while, I just slide a knife around the edges of the loaf and then turn it upside down to remove the loaf. This keeps the loaf looking so beautiful and if you want to give a loaf away, a pretty loaf is a must for one's self esteem, right? This seriously makes a difference and makes washing up the pans afterwards a breeze.

2) Historically, in my experience, Banana Bread gets dark brown on top quickly but the center takes forever to cook through so there is always a battle between the top being too brown (or burned) and the inside still being runny. So the past couple of times I've made this recipe I've put a piece of tin foil over the tops of the loaves for the last 15 minutes or so of baking. I just cut it to size and lightly bend it so it covers the top. I don't really even press it down over the pan, just lay it on top and curve the sides down a little bit to fit the curve of the loaf top. This has been a game changer too. Perfectly baked loaves with solid centers and the tops are perfectly browned without any edges getting too crispy, dark or shriveled from overcooking. Loved figuring out this simple trick.

3) I usually double this recipe and end up with three loaves. I make it in my KitchenAid Professional mixer and the bowl is as full as you'd want it to get once I get all the ingredients in there. Hopefully that gives you some idea about how much this recipe makes and how to handle making more loaves at one time. The bread freezes well in an airtight freezer bag...but I have to say we don't ever had it last more than two weeks or so. So it's not like I ever have loaves in the freezer for any extended amount of time. If The Man knows there's Banana Bread in the house, he pretty much can't ignore that fact until it's gone.

4) Oh, one last thing. I don't use oil. I just melt a stick of butter in the microwave for this recipe. I don't use vegetable oil much anymore. I just use butter in all my baking. Long story short.

If you try out this recipe I'd love to hear how it goes. Do you have any hot tips on Banana Bread baking you want to share? I'd love to hear how you like your Banana Bread!