What do you do with your ripe bananas? Every time I have overly ripe bananas and our freezer is full for future smoothies, I instantly think of banana bread. When I was a kid, banana bread was my favorite, but I have not found a recipe to top my memory. Of course, I put Paul Hollywood's recipe up to the challenge.
My personal challenge: baking my way through "How to Bake". This post is my experience baking and learning new skills from tackling each recipe in Paul Hollywood's, "How to Bake". I will also document any recipe changes that I made - mainly as a result of not having the ingredients on hand (i.e., we never have regular sugar in the house) - and how the recipe fared. I will not be providing the recipes that are in his book.
For the fourth recipe that I made, I decided to make a banana bread. I have a really good vegan, gluten-free version. And, I tend to turn to this recipe when my bananas turn, and my freezer is too full of future smoothie frozen bananas. Despite my own recipe that I enjoy, I was looking forward to a traditional banana bread. I was especially excited for this recipe because it was not only my friends favorite, but it used to be my guilty pleasure as a kid. I loved banana anything - bread, banana + peanut butter stacks, pudding, or cake.
I made this recipe on Friday, and planned to bring it camping to share with our friends (and my friend who loves banana bread) for breakfast. Again, I was so excited to get in the kitchen and whip up some banana bread!
Let me just fully set the stage with some background information.
Campsite: My husband, our dog and I stayed in our two-person lightweight backpacking tent. Our friends stayed in style - a camper fully decked out.
Weather: It was chilly and rainy.
Dinner: As a result of it being a grocery day, my husband and I opted for the last bit of "healthy" ramen that was in our pantry for dinner. Our friends went all out with steak.
As you can imagine, the banana bread was going to be our redemption offering for breakfast.
So, there is my set-up: some epic memory of banana bread that I have always tried to fulfill and an epic breakfast slice after a cold night camping. I mean, do not get me wrong, I like my vegan, gluten-free version, but it still misses the mark. I was giving myself the opportunity to let go of all my diets and enjoy flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. Bring it on.
Here are some of the lessons that I learned when baking Paul Hollywood's Banana Bread:
* To be fair, I can't really call this Paul Hollywood's banana bread because I made a few changes that significantly changed the intention for this recipe (see #2: date sugar), and honestly were a HUGE fail. I guess next time I will just stick to the recipe and ensure that I have all of the ingredients beforehand.
Check Your Pantry. This should not be something that is learned on the fourth round of my personal "How to Bake" challenge, but it makes for a great reminder. So, there I was in the kitchen placing ingredients on the counter, and fully committed to making banana bread, but I did not have all I needed. I had bananas, flour, baking powder, salt, and walnuts. But, it is not what I had that worried me, it was what I was missing. I did not have caster sugar, butter, nor eggs. My thought process: I have bananas, that is the main ingredient, right?
Date Sugar. In all of my "How to Bake" posts so far, I have mentioned that I do not use regular processed white, caster, or brown sugar. I guess it is not a surprise that I did not have regular sugar in my cabinet. The thing was, I did not even had my usual, milder sugars. I enjoy dates with nut butter and cacao nibs as a snack, or even a dessert. I was not crazy about date sugar in such a large quantity in this banana bread. The recipe called for a similar amount of sugar:flour ratio, and as I was dumping this amount of sugar in the bowl, I was questioning every granule that fell into the bowl being weighed. I should have gone with my gut on this, and either cut the sugar amount in full, or mixed the sugars. In this case, date sugar was all I had, so again, I was committed. Lesson: Too much date sugar overpowers a recipe, especially bananas.
Sugar is not Vegan. I have been a vegan for 12 years or so, and I just learned this myself. I will write this out again: Sugar is not vegan. I may be the only one that is surprised by this fact. Luckily, I have dodged this in the past by buying organic and unfiltered sugar, but now I know the reason this is so important. I love learning more about the hidden facts behind our packaged goods, produce, etc.
The Why: white sugar gets its color from a process that uses bone char as a decolorizing filter.
Peanut Butter for Butter. In usual vegan baking, there are so many substitutes for butter - coconut oil, mashed banana, pumpkin or avocado, applesauce, and vegan butter. Yes, there are a lot of options, but like I said, my pantry was sparse. I did have peanut butter. I decided to use peanut butter. It turned into an added bonus in my mind because my friend loves peanut butter. As a result of this decision I looked several recipes online for "peanut butter banana bread", and found a few recipes. I browsed the ingredient list and quantities, and tried to compare to the "How to Bake" recipe. The recipe called for 125g of butter, or about 1 cup, so I decided to start small and add 1/2 cup, and then 1/4 cup at a time. I ended up with 3/4 cups.
Egg Substitute. Our dog eats raw eggs with each meal, so I knew I needed to save enough for him as I packed our cooler for car camping. As a result, I was down to zero eggs. In usual vegan baking, there are so many substitutes for eggs that are sometimes similar to those used to replace butter - mashed banana, ground flax or chia seeds, applesauce, aquafaba, and vinegar and baking soda. Because the recipe did not call for baking soda, I thought it would be too many rising agents working at the same time, and thought it would change the overall dense bread into something else. I went with my tried-and-true substitute, ground flax seed and water. After all, I wanted the bread to hold together, and up until this ingredient, I had a lot of creamy additions with flour and sugar.
Suffice it to say, the banana bread was not the the biggest hit of our camping trip, but despite the overpowering date sugar, the texture was perfect. I guess next time I try the recipe, I will buy all the actual ingredients that the recipe calls for, especially, if I allow myself to have a cheat day.
On that note, I hope that you find a recipe book you enjoy, or this one, that I am currently baking my way through. Either way, enjoy baking and nourishing yourself and your family. And don't worry about not having everything just right - the only judge is you and yours.
Enjoy!
xx,
Jordan
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