Best Banana Bread - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph

hey everybody thomas joseph here and today i am super excited to share with you something that you have asked about and that is banana bread now a lot of you have been writing in saying my banana bread it turns out really gummy dense and it's not moist what can i do to make it better well today i'm going to share with you the test kitchens favorite banana bread and i think you're gonna love it we're gonna get started with the dry ingredients now in this bowl here I have two cups of all-purpose flour and do that I'm going to add one cup of granulated sugar I have a teaspoon of coarse salt again we use kosher salt here in the Test Kitchen so coarse coarse salt whenever you're using our recipes make sure you're using that and you don't use fine salt otherwise it's gonna be too salty I have two teaspoons of baking powder and one teaspoon of baking soda so this is a very simple quick bread that's what a banana bread is a zucchini bread a carrot bread it's basically any bread that doesn't use yeast to leaven these types of breads use chemical leaveners like baking soda and baking powder now to this I'm going to add a little bit of spice and this is really some somewhere where you can customize this recipe I have a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cardamom and a half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon but you can use whatever warm spices you like warm spices go really well with things like banana and zucchini and carrot so go into your spice cabinet find all those baking spices that maybe you use every so often and try them in this recipe I'm sure you're gonna like it so sift together your dry ingredients and this is really just so everything is nice and evenly distributed and you know what I really love quick bread recipes because you don't need to get out a stand mixer you can do all of this by hand super super easy the only challenging and difficult thing is that you need to measure out all of your ingredients but if you have a well-stocked pantry you should be able to make this any day of the week and now it's time for the wet ingredients now I have three overripe bananas here and these are actually bananas that I've stored in the freezer one great tip for you if you have bananas that are sitting out on the counter and they're turning black you don't have any intention of making banana bread that day pop them in your freezer because they're really great to use from the thawed State Reba Nana's I'm gonna mash this up with a potato masher you could also use a fork to the bananas here I'm gonna add one teaspoon of vanilla extract just for a little bit of flavor three large eggs and whenever you're adding eggs whenever you're baking cakes and quick breads and things like that you want to make sure that you're using room-temperature ingredients so these eggs have been at room temperature this will help to kind of have a nice even batter that will bake up nicely in the oven so I'm gonna just use the potato masher here mix these together and now for a little bit of fat which is gonna help keep a really nice and moist quick bread I have one stick of unsalted butter that's melted and cooled you know there are a lot of recipes out there for quick breads and spice cakes that use oil and while oil does contribute an amazing thing in terms of keeping a nice moist cake or quick bread it doesn't add a lot of flavor so that's why in a lot of our recipes we use melted butter because it has really great flavor and then the last wet ingredient here is a little bit of buttermilk now buttermilk is going to react with the baking soda that we have in the dry mixture and it's gonna create nice bubbles that are gonna leaven the cake and it's gonna be delicious this is a third of a cup of buttermilk here again this is at room temperature give this a little bit of a mix and now it's as simple as mixing the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients with a trusty rubber spatula here and you want to make sure your oven is preheated to 375 degrees with the rack in the middle of the oven and before you kind of start the process of making your quick bread your banana bread here you want to butter and flour a 9 by 5 standard loaf pan like this and that will just help in making sure that the loaf releases nicely from the pan when it's done baking now I have mixed together my wet in my dry ingredients but you can see there are still clumps of flour this is what you want don't over mix your batter because it's going to be really tough and you might end up with actually a banana that's kind of gummy so don't mix it completely we're gonna add the last ingredient which was a favorite Test Kitchen add-in and that is some chocolate chips now if you're not a big fan of chocolate chips you don't have to add them here but if you really like nuts if you like toasted walnuts or toasted pecans would be really fantastic in here even some shredded toasted coconut would be a really fun tropical twist on a banana bread so gently fold these chocolate chips in again we don't want to over mix this batter we don't want to over develop the gluten that's in the flour this is going right into our loaf pan and again this is gonna go into a 375-degree oven for about an hour maybe an hour in ten minutes and a way that you can tell if you are Loaf is completely done is to use a toothpick or a cake tester inserted into the center of the loaf and it should come out with a few moist crumbs now don't be alarmed guys if you get a few crumbs on your cake tester because you want your loaf to be really nice and moist you don't want it to be gummy so if you see any kind of bits of batter left on your toothpick or cake tester you want to make sure that you return it back to the oven but a few moist crumbs are perfectly acceptable give the loaf a little tap right into the oven again for about an hour all right the banana bread it's been out of the oven now after the first 10 minutes of cooling you want to turn the loaf out of the pan so that the sides and the bottom don't steam and get soggy that's one trick that you guys need to know when baking anything really in a loaf pan that you want to turn it out onto a cooling rack to cool completely it's a really great tip now this is completely cooled and I want to show you what it looks like on the inside guys banana bread rich chocolatey nice and moist from that wonderful frozen banana this is our test kitchens favorite banana bread I'm sure you're gonna love it customize it to your tail whether it's with chocolate chips or coconut or whatever you like there you go guys you've asked we've delivered now if you have any other kitchen conundrums write in the comment section below love to hear from you and we also love to see what you're making enjoy guys and as always guys click like and subscribe [Music]

Channel: Everyday Food

Views: 451,659

Rating: 4.9142504 out of 5

Keywords: banana, bread, thomas joseph, kitchen conundrum, Martha Stewart, recipe, dessert, food, easy, how to

Id: CrsWf63wnQI

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2019