The Most Amazing Easy Moist Banana Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to moist bread? ›

For example, fats like butter or oil can help keep moisture in, while sugars will help to caramelize on the outside and create a golden crust. These ingredients can also play an essential role in keeping your bread moist when added in smaller quantities.

Mix in a bowl 3 ripe bananas, well mashed, and 2 eggs, beaten until light. Sift together 2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon baking soda. Add to the first mixture. Add 1/2 cup nut meats, chopped.

Moisture is key when it comes to banana bread, and the ratio of flour to banana makes all the difference. If you use too much flour, you'll end up with dry bread. If you don't use enough, your bread will be too wet. The secret is actually in how you measure the flour.

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.

Honey adds both sweetness and moisture to breads such as challah. Be sure to use a pasteurized honey, as wild honeys contain antibacterial properties that can kill yeast. Store honey at room temperature, out of direct sunlight. Honey would makes everything better, but especially sourdough.

Baking soda works best in conjunction with an acidic ingredient. In the case of banana bread, this may be buttermilk, brown sugar, molasses or the bananas themselves. Recipes generally include just enough baking soda to balance the acidity in the batter.

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.

As a general rule, you can use either baking soda OR baking powder in banana bread – both ingredients will make your banana bread rise. While baking soda will react with acidic ingredients in the batter to raise your bread, baking powder can leaven banana bread without the addition of acidic ingredients.

If you use a yellow (or even worse a green) banana in your cake not only will it not have as much flavour it will be significantly drier. It's important to make sure your bananas are well mashed. If they aren't broken down well enough less moisture is released from the fruit, effecting the texture of your cake.

First, why the crack occurs: Since quick breads and pound cake batters tend to be thick and dense, the exterior bakes first. But as the center of the cake continues to bake, releasing moisture, it rises, pushing through the top crust, and creating a crack.

Why does my banana bread not taste like banana? ›

The main mistake most people make is using bananas that are not ripe enough. They need to be brown. They need to fall apart when you peel them. Way past the point where you would want to eat them.

Using too much flour makes for an extra crumbly bread.

If you're tapping your measuring cup to level out flour as you measure, or you're pushing down the piled-up powder, you'll end up using too much of it. I packed my flour for this loaf, and what I got was a crumbly cake with a dry crust all around.

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.

Commercial bread is softer due to the steam process used by bakeries, which is made to keep bread hydrated and fresh. Use cold water in a pan and put it on a rack beneath your bread to create steam.

A simple and cost-effective method of applying moisture to both the dough and the oven is to use a small handheld water sprayer, available from most supermarkets or online.